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Function, 
Feeling, and Conduct 



An Attempt to Find a Natural Basis for 
Ethical Law 



By 

Frederick Meakin 

M.A., Ph.D. (Harv.) 



TZolKCLffiv ofiv ol &\7]dets twv \6yosv ov \iivov irpds rb eldtvai XP 7 ! 01 -- 
fiuraToi elvai, d\\a Kal irpbs rbv filov. — Aristotle 



G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York and London 

3be Knickerbocker ipress 

1910 



,o\ x 



Copyright, 1910 

BY 

FREDERICK MEAKIN 



"Cbe IKnfcfeerbccfcer jprcss. IFlew S?orfe 



i)H! A 



INTRODUCTION 

Natur hat weder Kern 

Noch Schale, 

Alles ist sie mit einemmale. 

Goethe. 

H&vtwv xp"r\\x6.Ttiiv ixirpov iffrlv (LpOpcoTros. 

Protagoras. 

OUR thought of nature is a denning and quali- 
fying thought. We speak of nature, it is 
true, as infinite. And the mind, exploring nature, 
rests at no given term in its progress, but finds in 
each phase of the universal revelation, in element, 
atom, world, or system of worlds, the movement 
of exhaustless energy, the shifting barriers of 
interminable being changing through illimitable 
time. But though the mind's progress were end- 
less it were a process nevertheless of endless 
delimitation. Thought is thought of a more 
or less particularised content. Whatever we see, 
whatever we think, is, in the very fact that we 
think or see, qualified and so far defined. 

Nature is thus finite as object of thought, 
infinite as transcending any given process of 
thought. It is the function of thought to define; 
to seek for the source, essence, office, or end of its 
object. But the defining thought, impatient of the 



iv Introduction 

limits of each several object, and searching for an 
ultimate term in the aim, origin, or heart of nature 
as object in general, finds no such term, and 
confesses in the concept of the Infinite the 
abandonment of its search. 

But the mind finds no less interest in its task 
because its task is interminable. The thought that 
there is no bound to its activity is, rather, its most 
inspiring thought. The mind's interest, however, 
is everywhere specific. It looks into the maze 
of being and change through human eyes ; human 
feeling prompts its attitude, human aims direct 
its activity. In contemplation as in action its 
interest is determined by its own constitution. 

In this constitution is found much that is 
common to all sentient life. Man, with his in- 
tellectual being, shares with other animals certain 
animal impulses. He has appetites which crave 
satisfaction, he shrinks from pain and injury, and 
he is commonly ruled by the strong instinct of 
self-preservation. But if, abstracting from these 
common impulses, we consider only what is 
characteristic of man, his reflective and creative 
intelligence, we find him taking two main attitudes 
in the presence of nature or universal being as the 
means and medium of his peculiar activities. 

Of these two main attitudes, one is exemplified 
in the sciences, or methods of knowing; the 
other, in art, morals, and religion, through which 
man gives expression to what he conceives to be 



Introduction v 

the more perfect forms of being. Science, the 
product of the cognitive interest, is content, as 
science, to explore facts, or to discover laws which 
embody systems of facts ; that is, to take nature as 
it finds her. Art, morals, and religion, on the 
other hand , bring with them a measure or standard, 
and search the facts for illustration of their 
own exemplars; or, failing the search, re-form 
the facts in the sense of their several demands. 
In brief, science, as descriptive or explanatory, 
rests, with all its abstractions, in the actual; art, 
morals, and religion, as normative, seek an ideal, 
or that which, rarely exemplified in the real, shall, 
on demand of the imperious interests which they 
represent, give finer form or tendency to the 
real. 

This distinction, however, may not be taken too 
strictly. The mind is not a mere cluster of sepa- 
rable faculties or powers, but tends as an organic 
whole to press all its functions into the service 
of any main end. The cognising subject is not 
content simply to know, indifferent to what it finds ; 
the field which science selects for its scrutiny is 
taken on suggestion of some human aspiration or 
need, and the truth which it most affects is the 
truth which has the profoundest human interest. 
On the other hand, there can be no art or religion 
or morals without knowledge. Their standards 
are not grasped out of the air. Art which is not 
natural is grotesque; religion which in its deep 



vi Introduction 

discontent with the world flies to worlds unknown 
fades into a vision; morality, flouting at experi- 
ence, unenlightened by self-knowledge, becomes an 
erratic and mischievous habit, a vice. Even our 
ideals are in relation with experience, and may be 
proven just or sane only by the test of experience. 
In fine, the difference between the actual and the 
ideal marks but a difference in the attitude of the 
same subject or soul dealing with various material 
and looking to different ends. Here the matter 
of our thought is that which now is; there, that 
which we seek, which we will to be, which ought 
to be. The actual interests us as in relation to 
the ideal; the ideal is but the actual shaped, or 
to be shaped, into the real which we demand. 
And what we know of this formative process may 
possibly itself become a science. 

Meantime, as between that which is and that 
which ought to be, philosophy, the anticipatory 
and generalising science, must mediate. Human 
life is a craving, a tendency, a system of activi- 
ties moving continually, if inconstantly, to their 
several ends. Science discloses the actual trend 
of such movements; philosophy must define, 
if possible, their rational issue. In science we 
keep close to the sensuous fact, the experiential 
grounds of thought. But experience awakens 
aspiration, achievement suggests a finer achieve- 
ment, and philosophy, surveying the field of the 
known and searching with speculative eye the 



Introduction vii 

boundaries of knowledge, mediates between the 
truth clearly seen and the better truth obscurely- 
divined. Pressing into its service biology, history, 
sociology, psychology, it searches for the true 
relation between the untoward fact and that 
burning human impulse which, spurning the fact 
and impatient of the world as we find it, too 
often prompts us, wanting the guidance of know- 
ledge, to the creation of insubstantial worlds from 
the stuff of our dreams. 

Warned by the errors into which this impulse 
has led us, philosophy has leaned of late towards 
natural science as offering assured methods, and 
assumes to have established by means of its new 
lore a solid footing in the real. The eternal flux 
of things in which our human destiny is caught 
appears at length as something more than mere 
eddying and wash. In the animate world at 
least, in the long sweep of biological change, and 
notably in the development of human manners 
and thought, there is evidence of melioration: 
history is written as a progress, and, as some 
would have it, a necessary progress. Our current 
evolutional theories, in fact, are in a sense fatal- 
istic. Whatever man may do or may leave 
undone, they seem to maintain, the race must 
advance. But human progress cannot be inde- 
pendent of human activity. Man is a factor 
in his own destiny, is himself a cosmic force, 
and if he is fated to advance he is fated also 



viii Introduction 

to make adequate effort. His advance is condi- 
tioned by his effort. 

What we will to have or to be, to know or to do, 
is thus matter of more than present or personal 
moment. Through the solidarity of human in- 
terests it bears on the problem of human destiny. 
And moral philosophy, born of our interest in this 
problem and strengthened now by discipline in 
the methods of natural science, returns with 
fresh interest to the study of human needs, and 
with fresh hope of discerning the true direction 
of human effort or the rational human end. 

Our attempt here is in fact to throw a little 
light on the nature of this rational end. The 
need or the utility of any such attempt is some- 
times disputed. The moral life, it is said, is in- 
dependent of the philosophy of morals : mankind 
needs but the instinct to choose its immediate 
ends and the ultimate end will take care of itself ; 
conscience, the moral instinct, suffices. But life, 
we may be reminded, grows continually more 
complex. The simplicity of manners for which 
"a few strong instincts and a few plain rules" 
were enough we are now fast forsaking, and 
situations arise in which instinctive morality 
or the common moral sense is at fault. In fact 
the part played by instinct in morals is much 
overrated. The moral habit is mainly an ac- 
quired habit. It may assume some of the charac- 
ters of an instinct, but it is, strictly speaking, 



Introduction ix 

a tradition rather than an instinct that runs with 
the blood. It is learned by each generation with 
infinite pains from the generation which went 
before; and that which is directly transmitted is 
at most a more sensitive moral tissue, so to speak, 
or a growing responsiveness to moral discipline 
and to the suggestion of moral ideas. The 
necessity for the serious and systematic treatment 
of moral ideas remains. 

And in the discipline upon which society relies 
for the formation of the moral habit this necessity, 
it may be admitted, is in some sense recognised. 
Efforts are not wanting to justify the moral 
demand by some theory or some certain shreds 
of theory. But though there is in the common- 
sense of mankind a strong inkling of the rational 
grounds of this demand, which lie bedded in the 
structure of society and the form of human nature, 
it occurs to but few that there is need to work out a 
sustained moral theory. And men find the effort 
to construct or to understand such a theory 
fatiguing. We see them constantly falling back, 
in their speculative indolence and their dread of 
change, on the dogmas of tradition. But dogma 
is fast losing its force as mere dogma, and its in- 
stability weakens the force of the moral obligation 
which it was invoked to support. Even hoary 
tradition must submit to scrutiny. The modern 
spirit, stimulated by the success of free inquiry 
in the domain of natural science, searches boldly 



x Introduction 

in every domain, and not even the moral tradition 
is allowed to pass unchallenged. Error is as old 
as truth, and we demand some other voucher than 
age. 

With reason, then, we return to the old problem 
of conduct, and search once more for the ground 
and unifying principle of our moral judgments. 
The course of humanity, we may admit, is in the 
more civilised communities fairly set forwards. 
But so far its advance is more evidently material- 
istic than moral, and there are races, we should 
remember, which are apparently stationary or 
declining. 1 Even the higher types of our species 
are never quite free from peril of reversion to the 
animalism of the lower. Instance the arbitrament 
of war. The moral habit indeed sits but insecurely 
on the mass of mankind. It is, we may say, the 
last great gain of human nature, and is not yet 
ingrained or organic; and its supremacy is per- 
petually menaced by those older habits which were 
generated in the long brute struggle for existence, 
and which are in fact instinctive, hereditary, and 
organic. 

To check the violence of the brutish habits 
thus entailed on the race, society itself resorts 
to violence. Organised as the state and armed 

» It is indisputable that much the greater part of mankind 
has never shown a particle of desire that its civil institutions 
should be improved since the moment when external complete- 
ness was first given to them by their embodiment in some 
permanent record. — H. Maine: Ancient Law, chap. li. 



Introduction xi 

with irresistible force, it applies this force 
steadily and systematically to the repression 
of crime' — that is, of acts which threaten the 
peace and dignity of the state. And few will 
question the need or the right of such repres- 
sion. But as we cannot, on the one hand, leave 
the formation of the moral habit and the de- 
velopment of moral feeling to tradition and 
dogma, so, on the other hand, we cannot be 
content simply to support the strong arm of the 
state. The effect of force on the control of 
conduct is mainly restrictive or negative, and it 
reaches no farther than the prescription or rule. 
Or if by continuous imposition of the rule force 
does at length induce a habit, the habit is mechan- 
ical rather than vital. A true moral principle, 
on the contrary, works as an affirmative impulsion 
of the will, appearing in the free expression of the 
nature of the volitional subject rather than in the 
curtailment of its freedom. It is, in a word, a 
principle of life. 

Our attempt in the following pages is to trace 
out the constitution and general working of such 
a principle, or to undertake, in other words, a 
fresh statement of the philosophy or general 
basis of morals as grounded in human nature. 
If there be a science of morals it must of course 
rest on such a basis. It need hardly be said, how- 
ever, that in an attempt of this kind little that is 
new can be offered. Our doctrine is at least as 



xii Introduction 

old as Aristotle. All that is undertaken, in fact, 
is to set forth old truths in newer phrase, to 
piece out certain half-truths with rounder state- 
ment, and to pave the way for a comprehensive 
theory of morals, based on psychological and 
naturalistic grounds, by means of which some 
at least of the old feuds may be appeased and a 
firmer and more intelligent moral habit may be 
made possible. But to accomplish even so little 
were much. 



CONTENTS 

SECTION I. 
Organisation, Causation, and Finality in Nature. 

PAGE 

I. The General Unity of Nature . i 

II. The Systematic Unity of Body and 

Mind 10 

III. Organisms and their Ends . . 22 

SECTION II. 
Basis and Form of Volitional Choice 

IV. The Conscious Choice of Ends and 

its Relation to Pleasure and Pain 30 

V. Functional Conditions of Pleasure 

and Pain ..... 44 

VI. Determination of Conscious Func- 
tions by Volitional Ends . . 57 

SECTION III 

Organisation of Volitional Ends. 

VII. Principles of Organisation Exam- 
ined: Harmony; Reason; the 
Moral Sense; Self-Development 69 



xiv Contents 



VIII. Pleasure as an Organising Principle 86 

IX. Comparison and Estimate of Pleas- 
urable Functions . . .96 

X. The General or Rationalised Vo- 
litional End . . . .108 

SECTION IV. 
The Associative Life and the Moral End. 

XI. Social Union Necessary to Human 

Development . . . .116 

XII. Independent Origin of the Social 

Instincts . . . . .124 

XIII. Principles of the Social Union . 134 

XIV. Morality the Basis of the Social Union 143 

XV. Progressive Character of the Moral 

Law ..... 154 

XVI. Prescriptive Morality and the Moral 

Spirit ..... 162 

SECTION V. 
Moral Discipline. 

XVII. The State's Right to Punish . . 168 

XVIII. Punishment and Responsibility . 178 

XIX. Responsibility as Related to Free- 
dom and Causation in Willing . 188 



Contents xv 

PAGE 

XX. Freedom as Related to the Volitional 

Idea ..... 199 

XXI. Moral Freedom and Moral Responsi- 
bility ..... 209 



SECTION VI. 
Relation of Morality to Happiness. 

XXII. General Considerations . . .219 

XXIII. Query: Does Morality Demand of 

the Individual Uncompensated 
Sacrifice? . . . . .228 

XXIV. Question Discussed: Unconscious 

Effects of Morality and Immor- 
ality . . . . .232 

XXV. Discussion Continued: Conscious 

Morality; Conscience . . .239 

XXVI. Discussion Continued: Value of 
Moral Principles Seen only in 
Life as a Whole. . . .249 

XXVII. Discussion Concluded: The More 
Complete the Virtue the More 
Completely is Virtue its Own 
Reward . . . . .257 



xvi Contents 

PAGE 

SECTION VII. 

Scope of Morality. 

XXVIII. Moral Discipline Presupposes 
Other Disciplines. All Merged in 
Religion . . . . .264 

Index ....... 271 



Function, Feeling, and Conduct 



SECTION I 

Organisation, Causation, and Finality in 

Nature 

CHAPTER I 

THE GENERAL UNITY OF NATURE 

NATURE is apprehended by the knowing 
subject as a cosmos or system. Nowhere is 
unreason, caprice, or chance; everywhere we find 
order, character or persistent quality, law. We 
mean, in fact, by the nature of a thing the essential 
law or method of its being, assuming as of course 
that it has such a nature or law. The fruit tree we 
see yielding fruit after his kind. Gold has a 
specific gravity of 19.33 and fuses at a temperature 
of 1250 degrees, Centigrade. Such is the nature 
of these things. And in the general term Nature 
we express our conviction that being in general 
is a being in accordance with law. 

But the order of nature is no mere mechanic 
order. The mechanic view of nature follows 
from the conception of matter, the stuff of which 
nature is assumed to be compounded, as inert, 



2 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

uninformed, moved only by alien influence. 
But chemistry and physics have banished this 
conception. There is no dead matter. Matter 
in its minutest divisions as in its most ponderous 
masses is vitalised by an immanent principle, 
reacts to all agency by inner determination, and 
asserts through all change its own elemental 
quality or nature. By abstraction we dissociate 
matter so-called from this animating principle and 
conceive of it then as the mere lifeless residue. 
Such dissociation, however, is but the act of the 
mind. In all matter, as real, this principle per- 
dures, yielding up nothing of its own even to 
preponderant force, but expressing itself in every 
resultant with its measure of power and in its own 
peculiar mode. Matter is in fact only as its 
principle is, or finds characteristic expression. 
And this is true whether we contemplate an atom, 
a world, or the whole breadth of the apprehensible 
universe. Wide as we may range we find an 
inner principle always at work, and as the eye at 
length wearies or thought droops on flagging 
pinion, we are brought to the conclusion that 
all things are related to all, and that in all things 
the moving principle is one. 

We are thus led to regard the activity of nature 
as the movement of life, and the union of her 
elements, masses, and systems as an organic union. 
Inasmuch, however, as nature is never viewed 
as a finished system, no end can be assigned, 



Unity of Nature 3 

no distinctive character can be imputed, to 
nature as a systematised whole. Ends are as- 
signed, mechanisms and organisms are defined, 
by comparison from without. Nature is never 
seen from without. All being, all qualities, all 
ends, and the means to all ends fall within the 
being of nature, which thus eludes all real defi- 
nition. That which we do indeed apprehend or 
define is some determinate tendency or aspect of 
nature: her elemental affinities, the gravitation 
of her masses, the evolution of suns and systems, 
the development of man. And the terms by which 
we are fain to characterise that which is in being 
and character exhaustless, terms such as Nature, 
God, the Absolute, the Infinite, the Universe, the 
All-Real, the One, are but symbols which define 
no more than the mode by which we arrive at the 
limit of definition. 1 

When therefore we say that universal nature 
subsists in vital or organic union we shall not be 
understood as imputing to nature the specific 
characters of man or of any of the organisms 
which we know. We mean no more than that 
natural processes show such interdependence and 

1 Perhaps we know only some of the elements of which 
existence, considered as a whole, is composed. At all events, 
it is here impossible to verify the use of analogy, because the 
whole is never given. . . . Neither matter nor spirit, neither 
multiplicity nor unity, neither being nor becoming, are fit 
to be ultimate expressions of existence. — Harald Hoffding: 
Mind, April, 1905. 



4 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

interrelation and yield such clear proof of inner 
direction that they cannot be adequately conceived 
as lifeless or mechanical processes controlled wholly 
from without. Each thing is in itself a centre and 
origin of influence. But through this influence 
which by nature it exerts, and the influence to 
which by nature it responds, it is related to all. As 
it acts or reacts it is ; and each thing is just what 
it is because all else, being what it is, evokes from 
each thing its characteristic activity. The needle 
of the compass varies with the variations in the 
constitution of the earth's crust. The light of 
suns incalculably remote flecks the plate on which 
the astronomer maps the heavens. Hence the 
universe of nature, uniting all elements in sensitive 
and constant interaction, each and all moved by 
an immanent principle, may be called a living 
universe. 

And this universe, in virtue of its principle, is 
one. Not that we can shut in the illimitable by 
a term. Nature's universal being has no assignable 
bounds and is therefore no mere arithmetical unit. 
And as inclusive of all that is real it cannot be 
adequately expressed by such terms as Power, 
Wisdom, Goodness, or any mere abstraction. It 
is as including no insulated content, as nowhere 
disparted by any absolute line, as centred at each 
point of its being, that the universe is one. 

Nature, we say then, though eluding definition, 
offers to our apprehension a certain unity in 



Unity of Nature 5 

difference: a unity of system with ineffaceable 
distinctions in quality and mode. And the 
familiar law in which this unity in difference 
is implied is the law of causation. Nothing, we 
say, stands unsupported, or in its own right 
alone; nothing happens without a cause. 1 And 
we refer each cause to an antecedent cause in 
infinite series. 

But every effect demands, in strictness, a 
universe of causes. A spark may start a confla- 
gration. We assume, however, in collaboration 
with the spark, an indefinite number of causal 
agents. We assume, for instance, the properties 
of oxygen and of certain elements with which at a 
certain temperature it combines. But inasmuch 
as the collaborating causes, which in so far as they 
are constants may be taken for granted, are not 
the causes in which for the time being any practi- 
cal interest centres, they are commonly relegated 
to the uncertain rank of conditions. Yet the con- 
ditions are part of the cause. An event may be 
termed, in fact, either condition or cause as a 
shifting interest shifts the line of inquiry. And 
as we may trace back from the event an indefinite 
chain of causes, so we may diverge at any link in 
the chain and from the point of divergence trace 

1 Hap di ai t6 yiyvbuevov for' alrlov nvbs £!■ av&yK7)s ylyveadai' wavrl 
yap dStivcLTov x«p2s alrlov yiveaiv cx e ^ v - — Plato: Timceus, v. 28 A. 

Now everything that becomes or is created must of ne- 
cessity be created by some cause, for nothing can be cre- 
ated without a cause. (Jowett's tr.) 



6 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

a new causal series or an indefinite number of 
such series. 

And the multiplication of effects is as well 
recognised as the plurality of causes. Any mem- 
ber of a causal series may be regarded, in fact, 
as either end or origin of an infinite number of 
converging lines of causation whose distal ex- 
tremities are infinitely remote. That is, the uni- 
versal activity is represented in every event. As 
between causes and effects any given event thus 
stands like the common vertex of a double cone. 
And as the modes of causal influence may be 
expressed, wherever we have adequate knowledge, 
under the form of unvarying laws, the causal 
event, conceived in its full significance, implies not 
only an infinite series but an infinite system. 
Latent in the conception of cause is the conception 
of the systematic unity of nature. Nothing is 
real but as the universal reality is. All fugitive 
and finite being is relative to that for which the 
Infinite or the Absolute is our symbol. 1 

But we note in certain groups of phenomena a 
stricter and more obvious unity than that which 
binds all things to all in causal or systematic 
union. What we call vital phenomena are vital 
in a more special sense. Where such phenomena 
appear we find a definite organism or body within 

* The Absolute is its appearances, it really is all and ev- 
ery one of them. — F. H. Bradley: Appearance and Reality, 
p. 486. 



Unity of Nature 7 

which the lines of causal influence all converge 
to a definite end, namely, the conservation of the 
body in the discharge of its functions. We 
define life in fact, provisionally at least, as the 
principle which effects this convergence or appears 
in the tendency to this end. 

Every vital system is therefore, even when 
unconscious, in a sense teleological. It presents 
a synergy of functions tending in their discharge 
to the conservation of the system and, as incident 
to this office, to the production of other systems 
in type like itself. So far as we can see, however, 
no physical or chemical law is suspended in the 
accomplishment of the vital end. The living 
body is still incorporated in the body of nature. 
The force of gravitation, for instance, is exerted 
on every particle of organised matter; and it 
appears, if we allow for the influence of organic 
conditions, that the chemical elements in any 
organism show their characteristic chemical re- 
actions. But while the specific forms of energy 
follow within the organism their own specific laws, 
they are all made subordinate to the vital end. 
Or perhaps it were more accurate to say, since 
subordination of a law might seem to imply in- 
fraction or suspension of the law, that the interac- 
tion of the elements under the conditions presented 
in the living body constitutes in itself the vital 
principle which dominates the body. 1 Without 

1 Compare Kant's suggestion: Es als unausgemacht dahin- 



8 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

proof, therefore, of such infraction or suspension, 
we may reasonably infer from the general validity 
of the elemental laws as disclosed by physiological 
research, that organic causation is but a special 
case of common causation, or of undiscovered 
activities which work within the sphere of such 
causation. 

The doctrine of finality in nature then, a 
doctrine of which philosophy is coy as in some 
way subversive of natural law, need not alarm 
the most thorough-going naturalist. It is, as we 
regard it, but an exemplification of such law. The 
philosophical objection is valid, no doubt, as 
against the assumption of conscious prevision in 
all natural tendency to an end. But there is 
finality in nature before consciousness appears. 
It is characteristic of all vital systems. It is 
most obvious, however, in the activities of animal 
organisms, the structures of which are deemed 
to be intelligible only when their office or end is 
understood. Physiology, as a science of functions, 
has indeed little to tell us but of adaptations 
to an end. The heart, it appears, is formed with 
reference to the circulation of the blood; the 
stomach anticipates the food which it must 



gestellt wird, ob nicht in dem uns tmbekannten inneren 
Grande der Natur selbst die physisch-mechanische und die 
Zweckverbindung an denselben Dingen in einem Prinzip 
zusammenhangen mogen. — Kant: Krit. der Urtheilskraft, 
zweiter theil, sec. 70. 



Unity of Nature 9 

assimilate 5 and no instrument consciously devised 
for an end is comparable with the brain in the 
delicacy and completeness with which it is adapted 
to conserve and develop the organism in which 
it has its seat. 

And one might apply the concept of an end 
to the action of nature wherever we see a system 
of causes steadily converging to a common result. 
But there is risk of making the concept useless by 
over-expansion. It suffices to note that nature is, 
in any aspect, a process; that the principles by 
which the process is guided are definite and 
stable ; that the thing which is tends in a determi- 
nate manner to become the thing which shall be. 
And we may add that among all natural processes 
there is interaction and communion. Nature's 
common theme is the systematic or organic unity 
of nature. 



CHAPTER II 

THE SYSTEMATIC UNITY OF BODY AND MIND 

WHEN we come to deal with consciousness, 
however, and especially with the rational 
self-consciousness of man, we discover what 
appears to be a break in the system of nature. 
The lines of causation here seem to be interrupted. 
We ha ve " thought ' ' on the one side and ' ' matter ' ' 
on the other, and, finding it hard to understand 
how the movement of matter may be transmuted 
into the activity of thought, we rest, though un- 
easily, in a sort of dualism. Here apparently are 
two separate realms, the realm of body and the 
realm of mind. And the gap which divides them, 
it is urged, is no mere gap in our knowledge, but 
is one which cannot be stopped by any conceivable 
extension of our knowledge; the chasm is and 
must remain impassable. 1 

> Pour ce que d'un c6t6 j'ai une claire et distincte idee 
de moi-meme en tant que je suis seulement une chose qui 
pense et non 6tendue, et que d'un autre j'ai une idee distircte 
du corps en tant qu'il est seulement une chose 6tendue et qui 
ne pense point, il est certain que moi, c'est-a-dire mon ame, 
par laquelle je suis ce que je suis, est entierement et verita- 



Systematic Unity of Body and Mind 1 1 

To the naive consciousness this problem in 
causation does not occur. For the plain man 
pain is without question the effect of a blow, and 
it is the will which as cause nerves the arm to 
strike in retaliation of the blow. 

And even cultivated minds glide over the 
problem with easy assumption. Certain evolu- 
tionists, ignoring, it would seem, the question of 
the commensurability of physical and psychical 
terms, class consciousness as a specific kind of 
force. It is simply the equivalent of so much 
physical force from which, or into which, it is 
converted. Feeling or idea or will ranks thus, 
without more ado, in its place in the vast scheme 
of forces to which the universe is by our physical 
philosophies commonly reduced; and conscious- 
ness, as a refined kind of force, is brought un- 
der the general doctrine of the conservation of 
energy, or, as the phrase once ran, the persist- 
ence of force. 1 



blement distincte de mon corps, et qu'elle peut §tre cm exister 
sans lui. — Descartes: Med. Sixieme. 

Nee corpus mentem ad cogitandum, nee mens corpus ad 
motum, neque ad quietem, nee ad aliquid (si quid est) aliud 
determinare potest.— Spinoza: Ethices, pars iii., prop. ii. 

1 Various classes of facts thus unite to prove that the law 
of metamorphosis, which holds among the physical forces, 
holds equally between them and the mental forces. Those 
modes of the Unknowable which we call motion, heat, light, 
chemical affinity, etc., are alike transformable into each other, 
and into those modes of the Unknowable which we distinguish 
as sensation, emotion, thought: these in their turns being 



12 Function, Feeling, and Conduct, 

But to this the psychologist, tracing the relation 
of cerebration to thought, demurs. The doctrine 
of the conservation of energy, he insists, is a merely 
physical doctrine, resting on physical data and 
applicable to physical processes alone; and con- 
sciousness, as distinguished from its physiological 
concomitants, cannot be classed as a force in the 
sense in which this doctrine is properly held. 
The activity of the mind is not to be compared 
with the stroke of a piston or the movement 
of a muscle. The symbolism of speech, it is true, 
suggests the comparison. Nothing is commoner 
than to speak of the weakness or the energy of the 
will. But this, if we take our terms strictly, is mere 
metonomy. We impute to the will the energy 
of the inhibitions and movements which attend 
the formation and execution of the will. But 
there is in the execution of the will no transfor- 
mation of a so-called psychical force into physical 
force. No energy is imparted to the muscles 
by the volitional idea as mere idea. The energy 
which is liberated in the movements of the body is 
energy which was stored in the body. The series 
of changes from the sensory organ inwards to the 
brain, and outwards from the brain to the muscles 
which respond to the sensory stimulus, is a series 
without a break; consciousness, taken in its ordi- 

directly or indirectly re-transformable into the original shapes 
— Herbert Spencer: First Principles, chap, viii., sec 71 (4th 
ed.). 



Systematic Unity of Body and Mind 13 

nary abstract sense, never for an instant interrupts 
the series. That is to say, consciousness absorbs 
no cerebral energy, cerebration does not cease 
when consciousness begins, and the physical series 
and the psychical series must be conceived as in 
this respect distinct. The operations of the mind , 
if we share the psychologist's view, never occur 
in the strict line of neural or cerebral change. 1 

It follows further, if causation is restricted, as 
it commonly is, to changes in the form in which 
energy is exerted, that the relation between body 
and mind cannot be regarded as a causal relation. 
My volition, as a merely psychical fact, is not, 
in this view, the cause of the act by which I strike 
down a foe or lift up a friend. The cause must 
be sought in the liberation of cerebral and muscular 
tensions accompanying the formation and exe- 
cution of the volitional idea. So the psycholo- 
gist insists. There being here no interaction, no 
transformation of forces, parallelism or concomi- 
tance is all that we can assert. We must give up 

1 L'idee n'intervient jamais physiquement et de maniere 
a. faire breche au m^canisme universel. — A. Fouillee: Exist, 
et Devel. de la Volonte; Rev. Philos., Juin, 1892, p. 597. 

It is never possible to arrive, by way of a molecular mechan- 
ics, at any sort of psychical quality or process. . . . Psychical 
processes refuse to submit to any one of our physical 
measures of energy; and the physical molecular processes, 
so far as we are able to follow them, are seen to be transformed, 
variously enough, into one another, but never directly into 
psychical qualities. — Wundt: Prin. of Phys. Psychology, -vol. 
i., chap, iii., sec. 5 (Titchener's tr., p. 102). 



H Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

the causal relation, it would seem, in dealing with 
the relations of body and mind, and take up, 
with more or less protest, 1 the doctrine of pre- 
established harmony in new form. 

It may appear, however, that there is a mis- 
understanding here, or at least that the "gap" 
which we are supposed to have found is by no 
means unique, or so effective in disrupting the 
scheme of things as speculative thought has 
assumed. The physicist, dealing with the object- 
ive world, is naturally most interested in that 
attribute of things which is the most decisive test 
of their objectivity — their capacity, namely, to 
resist or to overcome resistance. This attribute 
the psychologist reduces, with some variation 
of detail, to terms of the sense of pressure and 
strain and of muscular movement ; and it is from 
this attribute that we form the idea of matter 
as the seat of energy or power. A step further, 
and energy or power is itself dissociated from 
matter, which is thus left dead and inert. But 
the energy thus dissociated in thought is never 
dissociated in fact. Nor can we in fact isolate 
either matter or power from such attributes as 
heat, light, colour, or sound. Some such attri- 
butes inhere in every material object, inseparably 

1 Constant parallelism plus absolute separation is logically 
so unstable a position that the theory either lapses into some 
form of crude monism, or one series is in the end subordinated 
to the other. — James Ward: Naturalism and Agnosticism, 
vol. i., lect. vi. 



Systematic Unity of Body and Mind 1 5 

associated with that capacity for exerting or 
resisting pressure which is the most convincing 
proof that we are dealing with such an object. 
Such inseparable association, however, is taken 
for identity. All phenomena, it is assumed, are 
reducible to forms of force. It is believed, for in- 
stance, that we reach the real nature of colour and 
sound when we "reduce" them to vibrations, that 
is, to projected impressions of the sense of pressure 
or strain or muscular effort. But no such reduc- 
tion is in fact possible. Visual and auditory sen- 
sations are not dermal or tendinous or muscular 
sensations. We may find, under certain con- 
ditions, that vibrations will be accompanied by, 
or as we say "produce," impressions of colour or 
sound. But as colour cannot be identified with 
sound, neither colour nor sound can be identified 
with vibrations. Colour, sound, and vibrations 
refer each to independent sensory data, and how- 
ever closely they may be associated as states or 
qualities of objects, their differences cannot be 
effaced nor should their sources be confused. 1 

If therefore the philosophical demand for 
unity requires the resolution of all differences into 
identity, we have here, in the forms of our 
sensibility, other insuperable obstacles to unity. 

1 Compare Berkeley : ' ' But if we take a close and accurate 
view of the matter, it must be acknowledged that we never see 
and feel one and the same object. That which is seen is one 
thing, and that which is felt is another." — Essay towards 
a New Theory of Vision, sec. 49. 



1 6 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

Here again, an alarmist might say, in the so- 
called continuum of the material universe itself, 
occurs many times the impassable chasm, and 
no man can tell, until the psychologist shall 
have definitely counted our senses, how many 
such gaps must be filled to restore nature 
whole. But we make no awful pause here, 
nor tremble for the solidarity of the universe 
or the unity of knowledge. We ignore the 
break. The objective associations of sense are 
so close and constant that we assume identity 
in spite of difference. Light, we say, ignoring 
the difference, is the vibration of ether; heat 
is a mode of motion; and the abstraction Energy 
or Force, drawn from the deliverances of a par- 
ticular sense but clothed with attributes furnished 
by every sense, is treated as the ultimate reality 
for all. 

But between the thing and the thinker, between 
the characters which we impute to an object 
and the thought which we impute to the subject, 
no such inseparable association obtains. Here 
is a distinction which, once recognised, we cannot 
ignore. We find here a line which seems to isolate 
the ego in every man from the world, and even 
from the body which we regard as the immediate 
instrument of the ego. On the one side of this line 
lies the whole material realm, marked indeed 
by endless distinctions of quality, but represented 
by what is practically a single attribute, variously 



Systematic Unity of Body and Mind 1 7 

hypostatised as substance, matter, energy, or 
force. On the other side of this line lies the realm 
of mind, and there this attribute fails. The 
activities of thought are inaccessible to any 
sense, actual or constructive, of pressure or touch. 
We apply to them forms of speech moulded to the 
needs of outer experience, and talk of a psychical 
substance, assuming a fund of energy in the mind ; 
but we are convinced, on reflection, that the 
terms are figurative and that spiritual and material 
"forces" are really distinct. The subjective 
realm is thus conceived apart. The common 
attribute, energy or force, in virtue of which we 
waive all insoluble difference in the objective 
world, fails us here, or must be understood in a 
wholly different sense. And the unifying effort 
of philosophy so far fails. The cleavage seems 
absolute. The undisciplined mind leaps the 
chasm here as even reflective minds leap it else- 
where. But philosophy, having once looked into 
its depths, despairs. Between the inner thought 
and the outer thing, which includes the brain of 
the thinker, runs a seam which apparently dis- 
rupts the universe of being. 

Hence the dualism in our philosophy. Body, 
with all its attributes, we assume to be in nature 
or in man mere energy or force. The synthetic 
habit is in external perception so strong that 
we waive all distinctions of quality, virtually 
reducing all attributes to one. But mind we 



18 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

cannot reduce to mere force. Or if by analogy 
we resolve the characters of mind into a so-called 
psychical force, the two forms of force, the physical 
and the psychical, are left inconvertible. Body 
must stand for ever, it is averred, in irreconcilable 
opposition over against mind. 

But such opposition is after all mere difference. 
It is indeed a difference which we cannot resolve 
away or ignore. But it avails no more to break 
up the systematic unity of body and mind than 
the irresoluble differences which we find among 
sensible qualities serve to break up the systematic 
unity of a physical object or of external nature. 
There can be little doubt, in fact, that if we knew 
and always had known the cerebral correlates of 
thought, perceiving the cortical process whenever 
we were conscious of an idea, the opposition set 
up between the mind and the brain would never 
have been recognised. The two processes, cerebral 
and ideational, would have been regarded as 
essentially the same. Thought, we then might 
have said, is a mode of cerebral change, just as we 
now say that heat is a mode of motion. But there 
is a fallacy in any such identification of things 
different. Association, even inseparable associa- 
tion, is not identity. We may allow that our 
sensations have unequal value as indicia of the 
objects which we project or construct or infer 
from them; and we may allow, further, that the 
sensations which we objectify as force surpass all 



Systematic Unity of Body and Mind 19 

others in objective or cognitive significance. But 
no datum of knowledge can absorb or efface all 
other data. In the synthesis of cognitive elements 
which constitutes knowledge every element has its 
place and value, and must contribute of its quality, 
or the real and composite object of knowledge 
tends to fade into a dull and homogeneous blank, 
as unreal as any of the abstractions which phi- 
losophers substitute for the teeming wealth of 
actual being. 

On the other hand, elemental differences of 
quality are consistent with systematic unity. 
Body and mind, neither of which can be resolved 
into the other and each of which includes insolu- 
ble differences in itself, are both included in the 
unity of the person. This unity we constantly 
recognise; in volitional movements, for instance, 
and in sensibility to the hurts or the health of the 
body. In practice indeed we never doubt it. 
The doubt is philosophical. That is to say, 
we have found some difficulty, following a false 
clue, in harmonising our conceptions of body 
and mind with the idea of such unity. We have 
confused unity with identity, and when this con- 
fusion is cleared up our difficulty is removed. 
The true object of our search is a unity in difference, 
not a unity which abolishes difference. Thought 
and cerebration, great as is the breadth of their 
difference, are in systematic relation. They are 
conjoined in the nature of the psycho-physical 



20 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

system, which like all real being involves elements 
that differ. But here as elsewhere differing 
elements may subsist in systematic union. In- 
deed, to abolish difference were to abolish person- 
ality itself, which is a highly complex system of 
differing and constantly changing elements. 1 

And if in this complex system a certain psychical 
event systematically precedes a certain physical 
event the antecedent may, for the purpose of our 
inquiry at least, be called the cause. In practice 
no error results if I say, for instance, that the will 
to walk is the cause of my walking. I may 
allow that the merely physical act had its proper 
antecedents in the cerebral or neural changes 
which it systematically follows. But if the will 
to walk is not present we must assume that the 
correlative cerebral state is not present, and as 
we cannot directly verify the presence or absence 
of this state we are compelled to refer to the 
volitional idea as its sole index. The volitional 
idea thus represents the physical antecedent, and 
may in practice be treated as itself the cause 
of the muscular movements which constitute the 
volitional act. 

Inasmuch, therefore, as ethics is a practical 

1 L'unit6 du moi n'est done celle de l'entite' une des spirit- 
ualistes qui s'eparpille en phenomenes multiples, mais la co- 
ordination d'un certain nombre d'etats sans cesse renaissants, 
ayant pour seul point d'appui le sentiment vague de notre 
corps. — Th. Ribot: Les Maladies de la Personnalite in fine. 



Systematic Unity of Body and Mind 21 

science we may, in the light of the foregoing discus- 
sion, follow the common usage and assume without 
error a causal influence in our willing. Whether 
a true conception of the causal relation would 
allow us to make this assumption we need not 
stop to inquire. The practical reason is our suf- 
ficient justification. The truth which we seek 
to enforce is that the gap which has been dis- 
covered between the physical and the psychical 
realms is not so deep as to split our human per- 
sonality or the all-inclusive system of nature. It 
is simply a case of difference, and no more justifies 
the dualism of our philosophies than the insolu- 
ble differences in perception which we minimise 
or ignore would justify the pluralism of a rational- 
ising polytheist. The universe, like its microcosm 
man, is complex. In each there is unity in 
difference. And if body must be distinguished 
from mind, thought from the brain, with no hope 
of cancelling the difference, we need not stumble 
at the distinction. The unity which philosophy 
may legitimately demand is not the unity of the 
merely identical or homogeneous, but organic or 
systematic unity. And to such unity difference is 
essential. 



CHAPTER III 

ORGANISMS AND THEIR ENDS 

WITHIN the general scheme of nature, which 
we have described as an organic or system- 
atic unity, are found, as we have noted, systems 
which are organic in a stricter or more definite 
sense ; and it is to one or another of these stricter 
systems that we usually refer when we speak of 
an organism. But a definite organism implies 
a more or less definite end. This end, as usually 
conceived, is the conservation of the organism 
in the discharge of its functions, and includes, as 
we have said, the propagation of the species. 1 
How the play of instinct and the impulsions 
of appetite result, under the conditions of terres- 
trial life, in a better adaptation of the species to 
maintain itself in the struggle for life we have 

1 Chaque 61ement anatomique, chaque tissu, chaque or- 
gane n'a qu'un but, exercer son activity, et l'individu 
physiologique n'est pas autre chose que l'expression conver- 
gente de toutes ces tendances. . . . Tous ces besoins ont un 
point de convergence: la conservation de l'individu, et, 
pour employer l'expression courante, nous trouvons en eux 
1' instinct de la conservation en exercice. — Th. Ribot: Psy- 
chologie des Sentiments, p. io-ii (Introduction). 



Organisms and Their Ends 23 

not taken time to consider. Darwin has made 
this matter of common knowledge. l It is enough 
to say that the double aim, the conservation 
of the individual and the propagation of the 
species, is characteristic of vital systems generally 
whether in the plant or in the animal world. 

But with the appearance of consciousness and 
of such nervous structures as the presence of 
consciousness implies the functions of the organism 
are directed towards an end of a different kind. 
This new end, which may be distinguished as the 
conscious end, is not directly and primarily the 
conservation of the organism at all : it is to do the 
thing by which the individual may avoid or miti- 
gate pain, or the thing which shall tend to the satis- 
faction of some positive impulsion varying with the 
nature of the organism. And this conscious aim 
appears in the activities of an organism in which 
assimilative and other physiological functions are 
at the same time directed to the achievement of 
the organic or unconscious end, the preservation 
of the physical system. 

1 These elaborately constituted forms . . . have all been 
produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in 
their largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inherit- 
ance, which is almost implied by Reproduction ; Variability , 
from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life, 
and from use and disuse : a Ratio of Increase so high as to 
lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural 
Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction 
of less improved forms. — Darwin: Origin of Species, chap, 
xv (conclusion). 



24 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

But though we have distinguished the conscious 
end from the organic or unconscious end, we 
need not assume that the two are unrelated. 'The 
relation between them indeed appears to be both 
intimate and profound. The gratification of ap- 
petite, for instance, tends on the whole to the 
nutrition and development of the body. Appetite 
in fact is so closely related to the physical demand 
that it is often spoken of as if it were a merely 
physical impulsion. And we may say that 
conscious effort tends generally, in its search for 
satisfaction, to promote the characteristic activity 
of the organs employed, and thus inures to the 
welfare of the system. The particular satisfaction, 
it is true, may sometimes be noxious in its general 
effect. A cow will eat clover until she sickens 
or dies, and even men will break down their health 
in the indulgence of appetite. But the same 
selective influences, under which the functions of 
each vegetal structure are turned to the advantage 
of the plant as a whole, have in the animal shaped 
desire so that its gratification tends to the good 
of the animal as a whole. Consciousness, at least 
in its earlier stages, is little more than an added 
means of promoting the unconscious end — that is, 
of preserving the organism in the full vigour of 
its corporeal life. 

The fuller development, however, which con- 
sciousness implies may change the whole habit 
of the system. The conscious end, the satisfac- 



Organisms and Their Ends 25 

tion of appetite and other conscious impulsions, 
is not absolutely merged in the physical end, the 
discharge of the physical functions. Conscious- 
ness, even of the primitive kind, imports some 
addition to the functions and therefore to the end 
of the organism, which tends to discharge all its 
functions, including the psychic. In its degree 
consciousness, with the neural development which 
it implies, always modifies the organic end. 
Starting in an organism relatively complex, it 
becomes the occasion, under stress of some 
necessity which strains the resources of the 
system, of a development still more complex, a 
development to which, in the plastic constitution 
of man for instance, we can assign no definite 
bounds. 1 Consciousness, with its physical sub- 
stratum, is in fact an indispensable condition 
of the evolution of life in all its advanced forms. 
Without it the development of organised nature 
would have been arrested in its initial stages: 
the vegetal structure would have been the acme 
of the organic series. 

1 We may admit, at all events provisionally, that the laws 
of variation and natural selection, acting through the struggle 
for existence and the continual need of more perfect adapta- 
tion to the physical and biological environments, may have 
brought about, first, that perfection of bodily structure in 
which he [man] is so far above all other animals, and in 
co-ordination with it the larger and more developed brain, by 
means of which he has been able to utilise that structure. — 
Alfred Russell Wallace : Darwinism, chap. xv. 



26 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

But the complexity and intricacy of the conscious 
organism demand nice adjustment to external 
conditions, and therefore any given adjustment 
is in such an organism more or less unstable. 
Changes in these conditions may disturb adapta- 
tions which it has cost generations of experience to 
establish. Under altered surroundings the effect 
of which the individual has not intelligence enough 
to grasp, tastes, instincts, or habits which had 
once served to protect may lead to pain, injury, 
or death. The conscious aim may thus frustrate 
the unconscious aim and emerge as distinct through 
the fact of such opposition. Or the two aims 
may diverge through the sheer force of the con- 
scious impulse itself seeking its own satisfaction. 
The brute mother will sacrifice her life at the 
prompting of maternal feeling, and safety is dis- 
regarded, at every stage of psychic development, 
in the ardour of conflict. But such cases may be 
regarded perhaps as merely occasional or excep- 
tional. Maternal and combatant feeling no doubt 
represent in the main conscious aims made sub- 
ordinate, in accordance with the laws of survival, 
to the general aim of each vital system to con- 
serve the individual and perpetuate the species. 
But the exceptional cases emphasise the fact 
that the conscious aim, though for the most 
part coincident with this general organic aim, is 
not to be confounded with it. Consciousness 
has an end of its own. It pursues its own 



Organisms and Their Ends 27 

satisfaction, even at the expense of the vital 
system. 

And the importance of consciousness increases 
with the development of the system. Both inter- 
nal impulse and external pressure, in the case of an 
organism capable of growth, favour the expansion 
of the conscious life; and by degrees the central 
aim of the system, which lies primarily well within 
the domain of physical function, shifts towards 
the psychic domain. That is to say, distinctively 
conscious ends are more and more completely 
emancipated from the service of the body and 
become ends in themselves. Acts are performed 
and habits are acquired, by ourselves for instance, 
purely for the interest they excite in us. We do 
things physically indifferent because we like 
to do them. The physical tendencies of course 
still survive, but the body, when consciousness 
is highly developed, is consciously nurtured and 
protected, not for the body's sake, but for the 
sake of the conscious functions of which the bodily 
life is the condition. 

But the organisation of the psychical life, 
even in man, is incomplete. We know only a 
little more of the general trend of our conscious 
activities than the bird knows of the meaning of 
its nest or of its migrations. Keenly conscious 
of the immediate objects of desire, and eager to 
grasp them, we shape our desires with scant insight 
into their bearings on each other or on any com- 



2& Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

prehensive end. Our consciousness is thus, rela- 
tively speaking, only a little more intelligent than 
animal instinct. It is occupied in the pursuit of 
jarring and proximate ends, and such unity of aim 
as appears in the issue is due rather to the consti- 
tutional trend of the system and the pressure of 
the social environment than to the effect of self- 
conscious direction. Of the cause, however, we 
might scarcely complain were but a reasonable 
unity assured. But there is little appearance 
of such unity, either constitutional or acquired, 
in the general trend of our conscious acts. The 
physical functions are fairly organised in the 
interest of the corporeal life. But the psychic or 
conscious life is erratic, inconsequent, discordant. 
Its organisation is yet to be achieved. 

The fundamental inquiry, then, in respect of the 
conscious conduct of life is for some governing 
principle which shall unify our aims. Discord 
implies impotence in the pursuit of any end, and, 
as the essence of the conscious life is to act for ends , 
a life at issue with itself must defeat itself. It 
is conceivable, however, that there may be differ- 
ent types of unity, governed by different principles 
of conduct, each effective in its way. Experience 
in fact offers us diversity of type. Is there a 
normal type? If so, what is the norm, and how 
is it determined? In other words, what is the 
standard by which we may estimate the worth of 
our acts, and by reference to which a choice may 



Organisms and Their Ends 29 

be made as among various conceivable types? 
What, in fine, is the true principle of conscious 
choice ? 

Assuming that a "true" principle of choice 
is one which must be based on the principles of 
human nature, we cannot answer this question 
until we shall have examined the grounds of 
choice, or the influences which in a conscious being 
like man determine the direction of the will. 



SECTION II 
Basis and Form of Volitional Choice 

CHAPTER IV 

THE CONSCIOUS CHOICE OF ENDS AND ITS RELATION 
TO PLEASURE AND PAIN 

IT seems indisputable that the ultimate reference 
in conscious choice must be to some affection 
of the ego contemplating or pursuing or achieving 
its ends. In other words conscious choice, as 
such, must be determined on grounds which we 
consciously appreciate. There must be presented 
to the mind a percept or idea of that which we 
choose to have or to do, and of the qualities or 
circumstances which commend it to our preference. 
The basis of such choice is not far to seek. 
The ego is not indifferent to the variations in its 
states, but notes each new phase of experience 
with characteristic comment. It is conscious, 
upon the discharge of any function, that is, upon 
presentation in consciousness of any object or 
idea, or upon the execution of any act, of a cer- 
tain response, which is the specific reaction of the 

3° 



Conscious Choice of Ends 31 

psycho-physical organism as a whole to the 
occurrence of this experience. And this response, 
determined in the depths of the organism, is in 
consciousness attested by a peculiar affection or 
feeling. 

Such feeling presents, in correspondence with 
the form of the action, a double aspect. It appears, 
on the one side, in that sense of satisfaction or 
pleasure which regularly accompanies the free 
discharge of a function in its characteristic mode. * 
It is felt, on the other side, as the sense of pain or 
dissatisfaction or displeasure which arises upon 
obstruction of this free functional action, and 
which commonly reaches its acutest form, when 
the obstruction imports injury to the structures 
concerned. 

The terms "satisfaction" and "pleasure" are 
here used, it will be observed, as if they were inter- 
changeable, and we may be reminded that in 
ethical speculation they have been distinguished. 
The distinction is not without warrant in common 
usage. When the function on which feeling 
attends is sensory, the feeling is commonly called 

1 The organ of sight, like every other, requires activity, 
and its natural normal functioning is accompanied by pleasure, 
as appears to be the case with all normal functioning. — H. 
Hofiding: Outlines of Psychology, vi., A, 3, e (Lowndes's tr.). 

Pleasure is seen to be nothing more than the feeling of the 
performance of function, or the free discharge of vital energy. 
— Henry Sturt: Self-realisation; Intern. Journ. of Ethics, April, 



3 2 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

pleasure. The subject is in such case assumed 
to be passive, the activity of the organs of sensation 
being usually ignored. It is in this passive sense 
that we speak of the pleasure which we derive 
from the beauty of a flower, the sweetness of an 
orange, or the strains of a melody. When, 
however, the conscious subject is obviously active 
and effort is directed to the accomplishment 
of a purpose, the resultant pleasurable feeling is 
more commonly called satisfaction. And this 
pleasurable feeling so regularly follows achieve- 
ment that the consciousness of achievement is, 
without analytical recognition of the pleasure 
it implies, itself called satisfaction. Even sen- 
suous pleasure is called satisfaction when it follows 
the attainment of an object of craving or desire. 
A starving man craves food and with food he is 
satisfied. 

As contrasted with the satisfaction which we 
take in a task well accomplished, pleasure is 
sometimes restricted, again, to the feeling with 
which we engage in the spontaneous activities 
which we call play. The pleasure-seeker is, in 
this view, a mere idler bent on relaxation or 
amusement ; or he is a trifler, incapable of laborious 
effort, who in his pursuit of frivolous pleasure 
neglects his duty. Pleasure is thus discredited 
in advance as a principle fitted to control the 
more serious occupations of life. The writer, 
therefore, who for want of an unequivocal term 



Conscious Choice of Ends 33 

makes use of the word ''pleasure" in its most gen- 
eral sense, is at a certain disadvantage. He seems 
to be reverting to a principle subversive of 
morality, and to represent the moral subject as 
shrinking from toil and danger and pain, or lap- 
ping himself only in sensuous sweets. 

But some comprehensive term — "happiness" 
or "blessedness" or "satisfaction" or "pleasure" 
— is a necessity of ethical thought. If we follow 
the lead of the psychologist, "pleasure" seems to 
be the most available term. 1 It would appear 
that the systematic treatment of conduct requires 
that all phases of the feeling which arises upon the 
free and characteristic discharge of a function 
should be classed together. And we must find 
some designation for the class. The psychologist 
groups all phases of such feeling, irrespective 
of its functional origin, under the general name 
of pleasurable feeling. The sources of this feeling 
are various. Pleasure may be of the eye or the ear 
or the palate, or of any sense. There are the 
pleasures also of action, of imagination, of senti- 
ment. And, save perhaps in hortatory discourse, 
there is no more reason for taking the satisfactions 
of sympathy or of a good conscience out of the 

1 A pleasure is any degree of agreeable consciousness which 
as such contents us, and is voluntarily held to ; a pain, any 
degree of disagreeable consciousness which as such discontents 
us, and is voluntarily repelled. — James Sully: The Human 
Mind, part iv., chap, xiii., sec. 2. All feeling thus seems re- 
dticible to pleasure and pain. — lb., sec. 3. 



34 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

general class of pleasures, because of the specific 
character of the generating function, than there 
is for isolating the several pleasures of eye or ear or 
palate because the respective sensory functions 
are distinct. 

But feeling, it should be remembered, is never 
found "pure." 1 Pure feeling is an abstraction 
formed for the purposes of science; as a fact of 
experience feeling is continuous with the functional 
act upon which it arises. Hence the variance 
which we find in the psychological treatment of 
feeling, which is by some regarded as a mere 
quality or tone of sensation, 2 and is by others set 
off as a relatively independent state. 3 But for our 
purpose this variance is unimportant. Feeling 
is at least in intimate relation with the sensation 
or functional act to which it is referred, and 
is incorporated with it in one concrete, con- 

1 We cannot have a pure feeling, i.e., pleasure and pain 
without qualities. Feeling in this sense is nothing which 
constitutes a separate object by itself. — B. Bosanquet: 
Psychology of the Moral Self, p. 31. (London, 1897.) 

2 We distinguish three properties in each sensation : quality, 
intensity, and accompanying tone of feeling. — Th. Ziehen: 
Intr. to Phys. Psychology, chap, vii., p. 130 (tr. of Van Liew 
and Beyer). 

3 There remains only the last of the three possible views 
of the relation of feeling to sensation, that which makes feeling 
an independent conscious process. . . . We will therefore 
interpret it as a correct interpretation of the facts, without 
intending for a moment to deny the normal connection of 
feeling with sensation in consciousness. — Oswald Kulpe: 
Outlines of Psychology, sec. 34 (Titchener's tr.). 



Conscious Choice of Ends 35 

tinuous state from which it is separated only by 
abstraction. 

This concrete state has other aspects also, that 
is to say, it embodies other elements which by 
abstraction are distinguished from both sensation 
and feeling. As registering the welcome or recoil 
of the psycho-physical organism, it includes in 
implicit form terms of approval or disapproval, 
a psychological datum which may be traced even 
in the highly complex judgments of morals. 1 
Again, bound up with this welcome or recoil with 
which feeling is associated, we find movements, 
expressive, instinctive, or volitional, apart from 
which feeling can hardly be said to exist. Such 
movements, it is true, may be merely inchoate, 
like those of subdued speech in reading to one's 
self, or they may be so far restrained that an 
observer may be unaware of the quality or even 
of the presence of the underlying feeling. If, 
however, this emotional activity is allowed free 
play, it takes a direction in reference to its object 

1 The peculiar ethical emotions, the feelings which find 
expression in all our moral judgments of men and events, 
are the feelings of approval and disapproval; the character- 
istically ethical attitudes towards things are those of praise 
and blame. — Alfred Edward Taylor: The Problem of Conduct, 
p. 104. (Macmillan & Co., 1901.) 

I hope it will be plain that I have insisted on the necessity 
of recognising the distinctively moral sanction of self-appro- 
bation and self-disapprobation, a recognition which, in my 
view, is essential to the very existence of Ethics. — Fowler 
and Wilson: Prin. of Morals, vol. ii., p. 272. 



36 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

which differs according as the reaction is pleasur- 
able on the one hand or painful on the other. 
The pleasure-producing object we seek, the pain- 
producing object we shun. 

We thus arrive at what may be called the 
elementary act of choice. Embodied in the 
original affectional state engendered by sensation, 
perception, ideation, or other functional act, 
and continuous with this act, we find an incipient 
judgment of approval or disapproval, and incipient 
acts of pursuit or avoidance following the sense of 
the judgment. In this pursuit or avoidance 
choice is involved. Choice is implicate in the 
very existence and expression of feeling, and it be- 
comes conscious choice when the subject, in the 
expression or on the suggestion of feeling, follows 
the lead of a volitional idea. 1 

And beyond this affectional state, thus generated 
by the play of function and determined in sense 
and effect as the function is obstructed or freely 
discharged, we find no element in consciousness 
on which to found a principle of conscious choice. 

1 Au point de vue psychologique, ce qui constitue la con- 
science, selons nous, c'est un processus a trois termes in- 
separables: i° un discernement quelconque, qui fait que 
l'£tre sent ses changements d'etat et qui est ainsi le germe 
de la sensation et de Intelligence ; 2° un bien-etre ou malaise 
quelconque, aussi sourd qu'on voudra, mais qui fait que 
l'etre n'est pas indifferent a son changement; 3 une reaction 
quelconque, qui est le germe de la preference et du choix, 
c'est-a-dire, de l'appetition. — A. Fouillee: Revue Philos- 
ophique, Juin, 1892, p. 578. 



Conscious Choice of Ends 37 

For the ground of choice we are referred, ulti- 
mately, to the pleasurable or painful functional 
act. 

True, the activities of the conscious being are 
by no means, all determined with explicit and 
conscious reference to this principle. The scope 
of conscious action, relatively to all that the 
organism accomplishes, is in any case narrow. 
Our distinctively conscious life rests upon a basis 
of habit, instinct, and unconscious activity, and 
constitutes, even when it is most active and com- 
plete, but a transient accompaniment of the un- 
conscious processes on which it attends. The 
body, with its complex apparatus of muscles and 
nerves, has a certain initiative of its own. It is 
not a machine moving simply as directed by 
the mind. It is alive; that is to say, it is a system 
of organised structures, each adapted to a specific 
end in relation to the general end, the conservation 
of the system. The human system includes, in 
short, a fund of organised energy which upon 
appropriate stimulus tends, even without volitional 
direction, to characteristic modes of action. 
Food and water prompt in the famished man 
the familiar attitudes of hunger and thirst. A 
timid nature shudders and an aggressive nature 
rises at the mere intimation of danger. And 
every man has his bias, his habits of feeling and 
action, which assert themselves, without mediation 
of the will, upon any suggestion with which the 



38 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

activities of the organism are in train. The 
organism reacts to its stimulus in a sense pre- 
determined by the form of the organism. 1 

And volitional control is itself nothing more 
than the determination through the volitional 
idea of the initial phase of this systemic activity. 
The organic apparatus itself does the rest. That is 
to say, volitional activity presupposes and depends 
upon a certain pre-f ormed character in the organ- 
isation of the muscles and nerves, and the volitional 
idea is in such relation, through its cerebral 
concomitants, with the motor centres which 
control the organism that it initiates the move- 
ments which result in the execution of the idea. 
Ideas thus become springs of action. But the 
transition from the idea to the act is an uncon- 
scious process, though a succession of acts may 
require a succession of ideas for their due control. 
And the so-called "force" of the idea is simply its 
power, through its neural and cerebral substrates, 
to start this unconscious process, which thus 
serves, as it were in the dark, to execute the 
idea which we call the mandate of the will. 2 

1 It seems probable that instinctive movements may have 
their source ... in the mesencephalon (the corpora striata 
and the optic thalami) . Volition proper, on the other hand, 
is linked with the cerebrum. Volition proper is characterised 
psychologically by the ideas of the end of the action and 
the means to its realisation, and by a vivid feeling of the 
worth of that end. — H. Hoffding: Outlines of Psychology, 
chap, vii., pp. 312-313 (Lowndes' tr.). 

2 The essential achievement of the will, in short, when 



Conscious Choice of Ends 39 

By conscious choice, then, we mean volitional 
choice, and in our study of the law of conscious 
choice our inquiry must be limited to the field of 
volitional or consciously determined action. The 
principle of choice must be charged or accredited 
with that alone which is consciously chosen. And 
it does not invalidate our principle to show that, 
under the dominance of instincts compelling their 
own gratification, the course which is on the whole 
the more painful or the less pleasurable is often 
the course which is actually pursued. A large 
part of human conduct is determined instinctively, 
that is, without reference to other feeling than 
that which is involved in the gratification of 
the instinctive impulse itself. In such case, there 
is no comparison and evaluation of ends, and 
therefore no explicit or conscious choice. But 
where the choice is consciously made, where ends 
are compared, and where rival claims are really 
measured and adjusted, the sole principle of choice 
appears, on inspection, to be that which deter- 
mines us to take the more pleasurable or the less 
painful course. 

This is the principle stated in its simplest terms. 
But man looks before and after, and the field 



it is most "voluntary," is to attend to a difficult object and 
hold it fast before the mind. The so doing is the fiat; and it 
is a mere physiological incident that when the object is thus 
attended to, immediate motor consequences should ensue. 
— W. James: Psychology, vol. ii., p. 561. 



4o Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

of volition, instead of being limited to two simple 
alternatives, covers the whole breadth of his life. 
The principle has therefore to be rationalised 
or generalised. Any proposed end has to be com- 
pared with many possible ends, and remote as 
well as immediate effects have to be taken into 
consideration. But the complexity of the esti- 
mate does not change the psychological basis of 
value. The reasonable choice must fall on the 
end or object in the pursuit of which the man 
has reason to believe, all things considered, 
he will obtain most satisfaction. Errors of 
knowledge or of judgment may vitiate the estimate, 
and the actual choice may be by no means the 
reasonable choice. But the simple case discloses 
the principle of choice, and the principle has 
only to be consistently applied to any situation, 
however complex, to make the choice reasonable. 
Our position, then, is that value in consciousness 
is determined, ultimately, by a certain affectional 
tone or element in the perception or idea or 
pursuit of some end or object with which the 
subject may be brought into conscious relation. 
And the affection or feeling may appear in either 
of two contrasted phases. The one phase of 
feeling is that in virtue of which we find the things 
which induce it gratifying, satisfactory, pleasant; 
and the things which, as pleasurable, we tend to 
pursue increase in value with the increase in their 
power to satisfy or please. The other phase of 



Conscious Choice of Ends 41 

feeling is that in virtue of which we find its in- 
ducing causes disagreeable, unsatisfactory, un- 
pleasant, painful; and those causes or objects 
which, considered by themselves, we seek to avoid 
fall in value with increase of the pain or dissatis- 
faction or displeasure which they induce. Feeling 
thus affords us a standard of value, and in a normal 
human being the choice falls, at least in simple 
cases, on the end or object which appears to be of 
most value. And in complex cases the same 
principle of choice is that which consistency would 
require us to follow, or, in view of the constitu- 
tion of our nature, the rationalised or reasonable 
principle. 

In looking to feeling for a standard of values, 
however, we should not lose sight of the depend- 
ence of feeling on function. Instead of referring 
to feeling simply, that is, to pleasure and pain in 
the abstract, we might more properly speak of 
pleasurable and painful functions, bearing in 
mind that functions may be either sensory or 
motor, perceptive or ideational. In this view 
our position may be defined in slightly different 
terms. Pleasurable and painful functions, we 
may say, mark at their respective extremes the 
positive and the negative limits or poles of choice. 
And as between any given alternatives within these 
extremes, the choice falls on the pleasurable rather 
than on the painful function, on the more pleasing 
rather than on the less pleasing, and on the less 



4 2 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

painful rather than on the more painful. In a 
word, the working of our principle carries the 
choice away from the negative limit as far as 
possible over towards the positive limit. 

Of course it is qualities as they are felt or 
represented in the appreciating consciousness 
which determine the actual choice, and this 
choice is, for the reasons stated, subject to error. 
Whole tracts of certain or possible experience 
may be left out of consideration. The choice 
may lie, too, between alternatives in both of 
which pleasures are mingled with pains. Or a man 
may be required to determine whether present 
pleasures shall be purchased at the cost of future 
pains, or whether he will submit to present pain, 
such as the fatigues of discipline, for the sake 
of permanently enlarging the sources of pleasure. 
But however broad the field of choice, however 
complex the ends or activities to be valued, 
the principle of choice remains the same. Con- 
scious or volitional choice, as distinguished from 
instinctive or impulsive determination, is governed 
by the subject's estimate of the functional or affec- 
tional worth of the end or object chosen. And 
the actual choice becomes a reasonable choice when 
the estimate may in reason be considered just, and 
the choice falls on the end or object of most 
functional or affectional value. 

But the relations of the affective state to the 
general conscious activity of the subject are so 



Conscious Choice of Ends 43 

intricate that the workings of this principle are not 
always clear, and its validity is disputed. It seems 
necessary, therefore, to look more closely into 
the nature of these relations. 



CHAPTER V 

FUNCTIONAL CONDITIONS OF PLEASURE AND PAIN 

ALL pleasure, we have found, is associated with 
the discharge of some function. Each organ 
has its characteristic structure and action, and 
pleasure is the indication in the affectional con- 
sciousness that the structures implicated in any 
given act or state are for the time being freely- 
discharging their office. Pain, on the other hand, 
implies either injury to the structure or a certain 
obstruction or disturbance of function. 1 

1 La douleur est liee a la diminution ou a la disorganisation 
des fonctions vitales. — Th. Ribot: La Psychologie des Senti- 
ments, p. 29. . . . Les manifestations de la joie peuvent se 
resumer en un seul mot: dynamog6nie. — lb., p. 53. 

Pains are the correlatives of actions injurious to the organ- 
ism, while pleasures are the correlatives of actions conducive 
to its welfare. — H. Spencer: Prin. of Psychology, vol. i., p. 279. 
(Appleton, N. Y., 1876). 

Notwithstanding apparent exceptions the great principle 
may be established that pleasure connects itself with vital 
energy, and pain with the opposite. — Bain: Emotions and 
Will, I., 9. 

As a general rule it may be laid down that pleasure indicates 
increased activity of life, higher and freer employment of 
energy. — Hoffding: Outlines of Psychology, chap, vi., p. 272. 
(Lowndes' tr.) 

A painful sensation is a physiological discord incompatible 

44 



Pleasure and Pain 45 

This, however, is but a general statement of the 
physiological conditions of feeling, and the re- 
lations of pleasure and pain to volitional choice 
would be clearer perhaps if we could state these 
conditions in more specific form. But it is only 
in the most general way that the physiology of 
feeling is understood. Feeling, at least in its 
non-sensuous forms, is too vague and elusive to 
be studied as we study a muscle or a nerve; it 
tends to vanish or change the instant it is brought 
under scrutiny. 

But feeling as allied with sensation is more 
accessible, and has been made matter of much ex- 
perimental inquiry, especially the feeling of pain. 
Indeed facts are cited in support of the theory 
that such pain is mediated by special nerve 
paths or apparatus, and constitutes, in fact, 
a special sense comparable with the sense of 
temperature or of contact. 1 But the term pain 
is in such experimentation taken in a restricted 
sense. It denotes, not the general counterpart 



with health or comfort, or, it may be, with life itself. A 
pleasurable sensation is a physiological harmony promoting 
health and comfort, and calculated to prolong existence. 
— Ferrier: Functions of the Brain, chap, xii., sec. 5 (2d ed.). 

> On the other hand see American Journal of Physiology, 
p. 843 : The evidence of physiological experiment . . . teaches 
that this sensation [pain] is the result of the excessive or 
unnatural stimulation of a group of nerves whose function 
is to give rise to what is indefinitely called "common sen- 
sation.'' 



46 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

of pleasure, but simply that form of pain which 
indicates violence or injury to some physical 
structure. And inasmuch as integrity of structure 
is of more importance to the system than any mere 
disturbance of function, we need not be surprised 
that nature should in some way insure swift 
recoil in case this integrity is threatened. This, 
however, is a detail which it is beyond our purpose 
to discuss. It is mainly the non-sensuous forms 
of pain, pains of the mind as they are called, which 
concern us here. 

Formulae have been proposed which refer the 
feeling of pleasure or of pain in any given conscious 
content to the nutritive state of the organs in- 
volved, that is, to the quantum of energy stored 
in the organs relative to the demands which they 
have to meet. 1 And there is, no doubt, good 
ground in experience for the recognition of some 

1 Pleasure is experienced whenever the physical activity 
coincident with the psychic state to which the pleasure is 
attached involves the use of surplus stored force — the resolu- 
tion of surplus potential energy into actual energy — or, in 
other words, whenever the energy involved in the reaction 
to the stimulus is greater in amount than the energy which 
the stimulus habitually calls for. Pain, on the other hand, 
is experienced whenever the physical activity coincident with 
the psychic state to which the pain is attached is so related 
to the supply of nutriment to its organs that the energy 
involved in the reaction to the stimulus is less in amount 
than the energy which the stimulus habitually calls for. 
— Henry Rutgers Marshall: Pain, Pleasure, and /Esthetics, 

p. 221. 



Pleasure and Pain 47 

more or less constant relation between the re- 
pletion or the exhaustion of an organ and the 
feeling attendant on its exercise. The freshness 
of a pleasure, which may be regarded as the 
subjective index of abundant energy in the officiat- 
ing structures, adds to the pleasure. Fatigue, the 
psychical index of physical exhaustion, is pain. 
But whatever truth may be embodied in the 
theory, it seems clear that no mere ratio between 
energy stored and energy expended can make 
up the full account of the physical substrates of 
pleasure and pain. Even if we allow that quali- 
tative differences in the form of the function 
always involve questions of degree or of quantita- 
tive change, the qualitative difference remains; 
it cannot be resolved into non-qualitative ele- 
ments. 1 And the qualitative difference, as may 
appear later, has often controlling significance. 
Some investigation has been made of the changes 
in blood pressure, circulation, and respiration 
which occur in the presence of feeling. These 



1 Change or transition from one mental state to another and 
dissimilar state is a condition of all mental wakefulness and 
of the simplest mode of intellectual activity, viz., the con- 
sciousness of difference. — James Sully: The Human Mind, 
vol. ii., p. 31. (N. Y., 1892.) 

Quantities are perceived first, I presume, not as being 
quantities at all, but as differing merely in quality. They 
are perceived next as also more or less of some quality or 
thing. — F. H. Bradley: What do we mean by the Intensity 
of Psychical States ? in Mind, January, 1895. 



48 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

changes, generally speaking, are such as indicate, 
in the case of pleasure, acceleration or reinforce- 
ment of the vital processes, and correspond, no 
doubt, to that vivifying of our conscious states 
which is generally allowed to be the effect or 
accompaniment of pleasure. A corresponding 
depression or enfeeblement of the vital processes 
accompanies the consciousness of pain. The 
changes in circulation and respiration are in all 
probability merely secondary phenomena, refer- 
able perhaps to some central state, 1 though they 
may, as in themselves pleasurable or painful, 
reinforce the primary feeling. 

It has been suggested, further, that pleasure 

1 It is, therefore, probable that in the case of feelings and 
emotions, we have chiefly changes in inhibitory innervation, 
originating in the brain and conducted along the vagus. 
It may well be assumed that the affective tone of sensation 
corresponds on its physiological side to a spreading of the 
stimulation from the sensory centre to those central regions 
which are connected with the sources of the inhibitory nerves 
of the heart. What central regions these are we do not know. 
— W. Wundt: Outlines of Psychology, 2d ed., p. 98 (Judd's 
tr.). 

Observations upon mania (in which there is excess of 
pleasure) and melancholia (in which there is constant un- 
pleasantness) point to the fact that the ultimate physiological 
equivalent of a pleasurable state is the increase of excitability 
following from a dilatation of the blood-vessels which supply 
the brain, while the ultimate physiological equivalent of an 
unpleasurable state is the lasting diminution of excitability 
connected with the constriction of the central vessels. — Kulpe : 
Outlines of Psychology, sec. 37, 4 (Titchener's tr.). 



Pleasure and Pain 49 

is connected with the extension and unpleasant- 
ness with the contraction of the muscles. 1 But 
there is no theory touching the physiological con- 
ditions or accompaniments of feeling which com- 
mands general acceptance. 2 We must content 
ourselves, accordingly, with such conditions as are 
accessible to common observation and appear 
to throw light on the practical aspect of the re- 
lation of feeling to volitional choice. 

For convenience of treatment we may dis- 

i "The reflexly excited extensions and flexions are the con- 
dition of those conscious processes which we call pleasure 
and unpleasantness." — Hugo Munsterberg: Beitrdge zur 
Exper. Psychologie, Heft 4. Cited by E. B. Titchener in 
Mind, April, 1893, p. 240. 

A later expression of Munsterberg's view appears in his 
Grundziige der Psychologie, Band 1, S. 293 (Leipzig, 1900): 
"Es mag sein, dass wirklich alle Lust durch eine Tendenz zu 
Streckbewegungen, alle Unlust durch eine Tendenz zu 
Beugebewegungen charakterisiert werden kann, und dass 
gleichzeitig Assoziationen sich zugesellen, welche den 
Lust- und Unlustton verstarken, und dennoch ist der eigent- 
liche Lust- und Unlustwert noch als besondere Nuance des 
Bewusstseinsinhaltes in dem gef allenden oder nicht gef allenden 
Objekt enthalten." 

2 Les conditions anatomiques et physiologiques de la 
genese et de la transmission du plaisir sont une terre inconnue. 
Th. Ribot: Psychologie des Sentiments, chap, iii., p. 50. 

For a resume of the literature on this subject see Ladd's 
Elements of Physiological Psychology, part ii. s chap, ix., sec. 12 
et seq. Ladd summarises as follows: 

"We are compelled then to confess that the localising of 
the nervous apparatus, and the nature of the physiological 
processes which form the physical basis of painful and pleas- 
urable feeling, require further investigation" (p. 512.) 



50 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

tinguish the conditions of pleasurable feeling as 
they may be traced, 

(i) to the state of the organism as a whole; 

(2) to the state of the specific organs or struc- 
tures which are in any given case called into 
activity ; 

(3) to the energy or intensity of this activity; 

(4) to the form or mode or such activity; and 

(5) to the relational character or stimulative 
effect of the original functional act which with 
its derivative activities forms a pleasurable whole. 

(1) To the consideration of the general organic 
conditions we need not give much time. We 
know from common experience that no pleasure 
can be felt in full measure unless the physical 
system as a whole be at the top of its condition. 
Exhaustion, or lack of nutrition, or any morbid 
process which lowers the nervous tone, lowers 
the affectional tone, and in some degree vitiates 
the satisfaction which we feel in the discharge of 
any particular function. 

(2) And the importance of physical conditions 
is equally clear when we consider the case of any 
particular organ which is in any given instance 
brought into play. Eye or ear, muscle or limb, 
cannot discharge its function freely and effectively 
in its characteristic mode unless it be well trained, 
in good exercise, and sound. In other words, the 
structure, considered as an instrument, must be 
an efficient instrument. The term "structure" 



Pleasure and Pain 51 

is not used here, of course, in any rigorous ana- 
tomical sense. It implies any organ or group of 
organs, however complex, employed in the dis- 
charge of a particular office- and it is a common- 
place of observation that the organ must be in a 
condition to do its work well in order that we 
may take all the pleasure possible in doing the 
work. 

(3) The intensity of the pleasurable feeling 
depends, in part at least and within certain 
limits, upon the intensity of the functional action. 
There is always in feeling a question of degree. 
Pain, we know, may be felt as a just perceptible 
annoyance, or it may be so severe as to destroy 
self-control; and it increases, within certain limits, 
with increase in the disturbance of the function. 
Pleasure too has a wide range, varying between the 
faintest affectional tone distinguishable from in- 
difference and that ecstatic state which absorbs 
all consciousness in a tumult of joy. And such 
difference depends, in part, upon the difference in 
the intensity of the functional activity. It 
does not depend, of course, upon the energy 
of such movements alone as are apparent to the 
observer. We know that a train of nervous 
or emotional reactions of exhausting intensity may 
occur in a system which is to all appearance quies- 
cent. It remains true, however, that a feeble 
functional action is likely to provoke, directly 
at least, but a feeble organic reaction as the basis 



52 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

of feeling, and to incite therefore but a feeble 
consciousness, relatively speaking, of either pleas- 
ure or pain. 

(4) It appears that the mode in which a 
function is discharged has an influence on the 
quality and value of the feeling no less significant 
than that which is exerted by the mere energy or 
intensity of the discharge. This is a phase of the 
question, however, which has been but little 
studied. Some light may be thrown upon it, 
perhaps, by reference to sensory stimuli, that is, 
to the objects or qualities which excite an organ 
of sense to pleasurable or painful activity. 

Take, for instance, the field of audition. The 
musical character of a tone, or that which renders 
it pleasurable as mere sound independently of all 
association or ulterior use, depends upon its 
"purity." Such purity we refer to the regularity 
of the aerial vibrations which are the kinetic con- 
comitants of sound; and the regularity of the 
aerial movements, as we may fairly infer from 
a study of the internal ear, is reproduced in the 
mechanical processes incident to audition, that 
is, in the manner in which the organ of hearing 
discharges its function. And when tones are 
combined the resultant tone is pleasing or musical 
only when the vibrations are compounded in 
certain simple ratios. 

A corresponding account may be given of the 
pleasure which we derive from colour. Such 



Pleasure and Pain 53 

colours or combinations of colour are pleasing or 
beautiful as affect the visual organs in a peculiar 
mode, depending, say, upon the "purity" or 
"harmony" of the colours. The form of the sen- 
sory function here also appears to control the 
character of the attendant feeling. Though we 
know little of the nature or visual import of 
the retinal reaction to colour and light, we are 
bound to assume that this reaction varies with the 
variation in the character of the stimulus, that 
is, of the ethereal vibrations; we must assume, 
therefore, that the pleasures of the eye depend 
upon the mode in which the eye does its work 
or responds to its stimulus. 

And this dependence of pleasure upon the 
mode of functional activity, as distinguished 
from its energy or intensity, appears to be general. 
It is seen in the motor activities, in the rhythmic 
movements of the dance, of speech, of thought, 
no less than in sensation and perception. The 
conscious organism, it appears, is not indifferent 
as to how it acts and reacts, but it discriminates 
as among the possible modes of its activity. It 
is not enough that there be life, and a liberal 
quantum of life. The organism, having a certain 
character, demands a certain character or kind 
of life; and pleasure and pain are the indicia 
of the fulfilment or frustration of this demand. 

(5) But feeling, as it invades the system, 
tends, as it were, to irradiate. It seems to react 



54 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

upon its own generating percept or idea and to 
increase its suggestive or associational power. 
Hence the direct affectional result of such percept 
or idea may pass, through the media of related 
or similarly - toned ideas, into a multitude of 
indirect or secondary results; and it not seldom 
happens that the secondary results outrank 
in value the primary feeling. A drop of dew, 
the smell of new-mown hay, the note of a bird, 
or the voice of a friend, pleases the sense. In its 
direct and strictly sensational effect, however, it 
is of slight affectional moment; and yet it may 
awaken, in a mind of associative and imaginative 
power, a train of recollections and images capable 
of producing a profound emotional upheaval. 

We must add, therefore, to the functional con- 
ditions of pleasure already referred to, the rela- 
tional character of the functional act. This is 
an important condition, since the various forms of 
satisfaction or pleasure show great differences in 
respect of their suggestiveness or stimulative 
effect. Roue and moralist alike have remarked 
the fleeting nature of the gratifications of mere 
appetite. Such pleasures, whatever their value 
while they last, have little in them to suggest other 
pleasurable states or to procure their own revival. 
Dying with the satisfaction of the original desire, 
they leave hardly a trace behind. The pleasures 
of social converse, on the other hand, of literature, 
of art, and, generally speaking, what are called 



Pleasure and Pain 55 

the pleasures of the mind, fall almost wholly 
within the class of suggested pleasures, the ideas 
with which they are identified being readily 
recalled and in the highest degree fruitful or 
suggestive. They become in fact an exhaustless 
source of satisfaction, freshening the routine 
and sweetening the drudgery of life. 1 

But enough has been said, perhaps, to direct 
attention to the general functional conditions of 
feeling. An organ is, as its name implies, an 
instrument. The instrument is part of the sys- 
tem in which it is formed, and it is developed 
with reference to a particular kind of work in 
the interest of the system. Pleasure and pain 
are the subjective indications of the manner in 
which the instrument is doing its work. And the 
pleasure is at its maximum when the functional 
or instrumental activity by which feeling is 
generated is truest to its type, and is at the same 
time, within the limits of structural integrity and 
the requirements of the office, most voluminous 
in scope and intensest in degree. The psycho- 
physical system is then most effectively discharging 
its function. In other words, life is sweetest 
when we are most completely and successfully 
engaged in doing the work of life. 2 

And what is this work? So far as the physical 

1 Compare Bentham's account of the fecundity of a pleasure. 
— Prin. of Morals and Legislation, chap. iv. 

2 KaTct waaav yap atcrdrjaLv 4<ttip i^dovr], 6/jloIws di ko\ didvoiav sal 



56 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

functions are concerned it is, as we have seen, the 
conservation of the physical organism in and 
through the completest discharge of these func- 
tions. But the human system includes psychical 
functions, the end of which we have distinguished 
from the physical end. In fact the attainment of 
the one may coincide with the frustration of the 
other. The work of life, in the sense which in- 
terests us here, is the volitional direction of life 
in the pursuit of conscious ends, for the achieve- 
ment of which a sound body is no more than the 
instrument; and our inquiry may be said to begin 
where the field of medicine and hygiene ends. Our 
problem is to find a rule for the direction of con- 
scious or volitional action. 

Oewpla v i]8i<7T7} de t\ TekeioTa/rt)- Te\ei0T&T7) 8i ij tov e5 Ixovtos Trpds 
to ffirovSaidraTov tQv xxf) 1 avr-f]v. Aristotle: Eth. Nic, X., iv., 5. 

For pleasure is attendant upon every sense, as it is also 
upon every act of intellect and contemplation; but the most 
perfect is the most pleasant, and the most perfect is the energy 
of that which is well-disposed with reference to the best of all 
the objects which fall under it. (Browne's tr.) 



CHAPTER VI 

DETERMINATION OF CONSCIOUS FUNCTIONS BY 
VOLITIONAL ENDS 

IT might seem that we should be able to deter- 
mine from the mere form of the system we are 
studying the uses to which it is best fitted, and 
from which we could hope to derive most satis- 
faction. The character of life's work, one might 
say, should be deducible from the structure of the 
living and conscious organism. Let us see what 
may be learned in this way. 

The human system is a system of structures, 
some with fixed functions, and some discharging a 
varying office. The vegetal functions show least 
variation. The heart, the lungs, the stomach, 
have each their determinate work, which they 
perform with monotonous repetition. Here the 
function is apparent in the structure. And the 
activity of the structure, having a fixed and 
uniform character, is withdrawn for the most 
part from volitional control. 

In the sensory structures, too, we find a certain 
fixity and uniformity in respect of the functions 
which are ordinarily set off as sensory. If we 

57 



58 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

regard these functions, however, as in organic 
relation with the motor reactions which they 
initiate, and with which they form, we may say, a 
psychophysical unit, this fixity of function tends 
to disappear. It is still present in the reflex 
arc, in which a given sensory stimulus evokes a 
determinate muscular reaction. But as the forms 
of the sensory impression and the modes of the 
reaction are multiplied and compounded, a given 
reaction follows a given stimulus with less uni- 
formity. The relation between stimulation and 
movement is then obscured. And the relation 
becomes at length so complex that it baffles even 
the most intelligent scrutiny, and the reaction 
tends to assume the appearance of spontaneity. 
In such case the form of the structure manifestly 
throws little light on the precise character of the 
function. It gives us at most the range of possible 
activity. The hand can grasp a dagger and 
wield a pen with like facility, but which it shall 
do the structure of the hand will not help us to 
decide. 

And the difficulty is still greater when we come 
to consider what we call the higher functions of the 
conscious organism, that is, those intellectual func- 
tions which are disengaged from the service of the 
unconscious end and are directed to ends of their 
own. Here the specific form of the function can- 
not be made out by the examination of any 
structure which we may assume to be implicated 



Determination of Functions 59 

in the discharge of the function. In the first 
place, the brain, with its cells and processes, 
or the structures to which intellectual activity 
is usually referred, cannot, save in the most 
general way, be mapped out or defined with 
reference to function at all. 1 These structures 
are subject, in the second place, to indefinite 
variation in their connection and arrangement, 
and each new arrangement constitutes virtually 
a new structure. Manifestly, with an instrument 
adapted to uses so various, we need a principle not 
disclosed by a mere inspection of the instrument 
definitely to determine its use. From even the 
completest anatomy of the brain one could hardly 
hope to infer a code for the guidance of volitional 
activity. We know, generally, that there are 
limits beyond which the cellular reactions cannot 
be pushed without lesion of the brain tissue. 
But to know the limits of one's strength is not 
to know how to apply one's strength. The rule 
of life is not written in the cerebral structures. 

The law of volitional conduct, 'therefore, must be 
sought for elsewhere. And we have the means 
of its determination at hand. Structure, function, 
and end, are but three aspects of the same organic 

1 Consciousness . . . being mainly of things seen if the 
stream [of innervation] is strongest occipitally, of things 
heard if it is strongest temporally, of things felt, etc., if the 
stream occupies most intensely the "motor zone." — William 
James: Psychology, vol. i., p. 65. 



60 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

fact, and instead of looking backwards to the 
structure, we may, in the case of psychical func- 
tions, look forward, under the guidance of the 
law of conscious choice, to the end. Even phy- 
sical functions are denned with reference to an 
end, which is, ultimately, the conservation of the 
physical system; but when the part taken by a 
physical structure with reference to this end is 
simple and constant, a mere inspection of the 
structure may reveal to the experienced eye its 
particular function and proximate end. In the 
mental and moral life, on the other hand, struc- 
ture, as we have seen, suggests only in the vaguest 
and most general way the form of the function. 
Our only recourse, therefore, is to infer the func- 
tion from the end. 

The end, it may be said, is in the conscious life 
continually shifting, and requires in each case 
a fresh structural adjustment. But with the intri- 
cacies of structure we have here nothing to do, if 
only we may determine the function. We may 
even ignore the details of function save as they 
appear in our practical conduct. This is what 
interests us as ethical students. And the activities 
or functions which constitute the practical conduct 
of life are determined with reference to ends. 
The end of such conduct is of course present only 
in idea, but this idea is a present fact, and as 
idea it is to the subject at least always discernible. 
It is the volitional idea. In volitional choice, 



Determination of Functions 61 

which includes moral choice, the activities of the 
subject are always directed to the realisation of an 
idea; and the mental or psychical function is 
determined with reference to this idea, the con- 
ception and execution of which constitutes what 
we call an act of the will. 1 

If, therefore, the principle of conscious choice 
depends on the relation of feeling to function, and 
the conscious functions proper can be determined 

1 The terminus of the psychological process in volition . . . 
is always an idea. — W. James: Psychology, vol. ii., p. 

567- 

On pourrait done . . . definir la volition : le desir determi- 
nant d'une fin et de ses moyens, concus comme dependants 
d'un premier moyen qui est ce desir meme et d'une derniere fin 
qui est la satisfaction de ce desir. — A. Fouillee: Revue Philos. 
August, 1892, p. 171. 

When we will to do something, our own psychical content 
at that moment is only distinguished from other psychical 
contents by the fact that the idea of a desired action accom- 
panied by a positive emotional tone is already contained 
among the sensations and ideas that are then actually present. 
— Ziehen: Phys. Psychology, chap, xv., p. 295. (Van Liew 
and Beyer.) 

Unsere Definition [des Wollens] umfasste vier charakter- 
istische Bestandteile. Erstens die Vorstellung eines Erfolges. 
. . . Der zweite Faktor lag in dem Gefuhl der Zukiinftigkeit 
dieses Vorstellungsinhaltes. . . . Wir forderten aber noch 
ein drittes. Die Vorbereitung, die als moghch empfunden 
wird, muss so gedacht werden, dass sie durch eigene Thatig- 
keit geschaffen oder wenigstens eingeleitet werden kann. . . . 
Zu alien diesen Empfindungskombinationen tritt nun als vier- 
ter Faktor die Wahrnehmung, dass jene den Erfolg herbeifiih- 
rende Thatigkeit sich thatsachlich realisiert. — Miinsterberg: 
Grundziige der Psychologie, Bd. 1, S. 353-354-355- 



62 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

only as in relation to ends, the doctrine of what 
we call the conduct of life resolves itself into a 
doctrine of ends. We have now to inquire, ac- 
cordingly, how the choice of ends influences the 
affectional life. 

We may distinguish, as bearing on the theory of 
conduct, two general types of end: the incidental, 
mediate, or proximate end; and the essential, 
direct, or ultimate end. 

This is a distinction well recognised in ethical 
theory. But the fact that life is a stream of ten- 
dencies which are from time to time diverted or 
modified or variously merged, but which no achieve- 
ment can consummate, creates in us the habit of 
demanding for every end justification in some 
ulterior end . We assume that nothing can be good 
save as instrumental to some other good. In this 
respect we are all utilitarians. The good we 
conceive as the useful, that is, as serviceable to 
some end beyond itself. But if anything is good 
there must be something, it would seem, which we 
find in its own right good. In the complex and 
continuous activity which constitutes life no 
act or state, of course, can be viewed as in entire 
isolation. No good is wholly detachable. The 
good may lead to other good, or it may lead to 
harm. But unless we share the pessimist's 
conviction that all good is illusive, we must allow 
that there are some ends which are in their direct 
and intrinsic relations to the pursuing subject 



Determination of Functions 63 

good, that is, which are conceived to be good, not 
as means, but as ends. 1 

Such ends are what we have called direct or 
ultimate ends. Their finality is not finality 
in the order of time. An ultimate aim is simply 
one which is not consciously chosen as means to 
any ulterior aim. The pleasure which attends its 
pursuit may be slight. The generating function 
may be sensuous or intellectual, or of any order 
of conscious activity. But if the end is pursued, 
not for the sake of other good, but as an ultimate 
object of desire, 2 that is, as good or satisfactory 
in itself, it is for the purpose of choice an ultimate 
end. 

Take, for instance, the case of sensuous percep- 
tion. Where the mind seeks satisfaction in the 
sensory impression, in the tones of a singer, in the 

1 Ei Br) rt tAos i<rrl tuv irpaKruv, S St' airb fiovkd/JLeOa, t& &\\a 
8£ 5id tovto, /ecu fii] iravra Si' 'irepov alpotifj.eda (irp6ei<ri yap ovrw 7'ei'j 
Aireipov, wctt' elvcu ksvtjv k<xI fw.Ta.Lai> rr\v &pe%iv) • Srjkov ws tout' av 
dt\ Tayadbv, Kal rb tipiaTov. — Aristotle: Nic. Eth., I., ii., i. 

If, therefore, there is some end of all that we do, which 
we wish for on its own account, and if we wish for all other 
things on account of this, and do not choose everything for 
the sake of something else (for thus we should go on to 
infinity, so that desire would be empty and vain) , it is evident 
that this must be "the good," and the greatest good. — 
(Browne's tr.) 

2 Constat itaque ex his omnibus, nihil nos conari, velle, 
appetere neque cupere, quia id bonum esse iudicamus; sed 
contra nos propterea aliquid bonum esse iudicare, quia id 
conamur, volumus, appetimus atque cupimus. — Spinoza: 
Ethices, pars iii., prop, ix., schol. 



64 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

lines of a statute, in the blending and contrast of 
colours, the satisfactory impression is, so far, an 
ultimate end. And the impression which yields 
the most complete satisfaction is that ideal or 
perfect impression which, on the level of sensation, 
the principle of conscious choice leads the subject 
to demand. This principle thus becomes the 
inspiration of art. Art is, indeed, by no means 
merely sensuous. But it requires that the sensory 
impression which is its vehicle shall be perfect in 
its place and kind. The perfection of this im- 
pression is in art either an ultimate aim or a 
part of the ultimate aim. 

The distinction as between proximate and ul- 
timate ends obtains also in respect of the activi- 
ties recognised as motor. Most of what we call 
"work" is directed to proximate ends. The 
ulterior end or interest is a home, or social position, 
or some interest which is usually distinct from our 
interest in the work itself. In "play," on the 
other hand, we are prompted by an immediate 
interest : we play from sheer delight in the activities 
which play incites. Occasionally, as in the case 
of the artist, artisan, writer, or thinker who enjoys 
his work, this difference disappears. Play is then 
mere relaxation or alternation of function. But it 
is still a response to the demand for exercise by 
functions unemployed, and the enjoyment which 
it yields springs from the effective discharge of 
such functions. 



Determination of Functions 65 

In the light of the general distinction of ends as 
ultimate and proximate, it need not be said that 
ultimate ends demand our chief consideration. 
These are the ends which determine the general 
form of the life, or the character of its functional 
activities, and so determine the quality of the 
feeling which is for the subject the ultimate 
standard of values. Proximate ends, being but 
means to the ultimate end, we should not choose 
for their own sakes alone if we were alive to their 
true character as means. But we confound means 
with ends and thus miss the things of real value. 
The habit of toiling for the means of living, for in- 
stance, becomes so strong that life itself in its broad 
functional capacity eludes us, and its affectional 
value shrinks to the compass of some monotonous 
task or some dull round of utilitarian employment. 

But pleasure, it should be observed, does not 
attend the pursuit of the ultimate aim alone. 
Feeling, we have seen, depends on function, and 
functions may be pleasurably discharged apart 
from their bearing on the ultimate end, especially 
if that end is relatively remote. Hence our daily 
tasks, which for their own sakes might never be 
assumed, are not altogether irksome. They tend 
in fact, through the multitude of small satisfac- 
tions which they seldom fail to procure, to imbue 
our lives with that spirit of content which is a 
substantial element of happiness. The good 
workman, indeed, makes his work for the time 



66 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

being an end in itself, and there is direct satis- 
faction in its accomplishment. 

But while every function has its part in pro- 
ducing the whole affectional result, the chief 
value of an end lies in the fact that it usually 
groups the activities of a considerable number of 
functions, each of which may procure its own satis- 
faction, and thus secures volume and variety of 
feeling. But this is not all. The body of feeling 
thus generated is of much more value than the 
sum of the particular satisfactions of which it is 
compounded. Feelings are diffusive, and the 
effect of their interplay is such that each enhances 
the value of all. We know how worthless for 
feeling is the aimless activity which depends for 
its incitement and direction on the inclination 
of the moment, that is, on the pursuit of detached 
and constantly shifting aims. By failing to call 
forth our whole functional capacity it fails to 
sound our capacity for feeling. A comprehensive 
end, on the other hand, by engaging all our 
activities keeps the mind active and alert, enriches 
the elemental feelings by the effects of contrast 
and change, and thus yields in its pursuit a deep 
and comprehensive feeling of satisfaction. 

But the adoption of an end, while it compounds 
our energies, limits and defines them. It involves 
the fixation of the attention on a more or less 
definite range of ideas, conceived as relevant 
to the end, and the inhibition of all activities in- 



Determination of Functions 67 

compatible with the realisation of such ideas. 
Only in this way can our energies be made prac- 
tically effective. And the attention must be pro- 
tected from sudden and violent arrest. Thought 
must be free to run to its object. Distraction, 
indeed, or that state of consciousness in which 
the thoughts are checked at every stage and 
rudely deflected from the end to which the will 
is adjusted, is the very type of mental anguish. 1 
The attention should not, however, be too rigidly 
fixed. The processes of life are subject to a certain 
rhythmical variation, which is related, possibly, 
to that alternation of waste and nutrition, expendi- 
ture and restoration, which is the basis of vital 
action. 2 Change is in fact so essential in con- 
scious activity that consciousness disappears when 
the attention is too rigidly fixed: sleep, normal 
or hypnotic, supervenes. And the main end 
should not be so persistently regarded as to 
interfere with the due consideration of subsidiary 
ends. In fact, if the main end is remote it is 
more likely to be attained if it is allowed for 
a time to lapse entirely from the field of vision. 

1 There is pleasure in proportion as a maximum of attention 
is effectively exercised, and pain in proportion as such effective 
attention is frustrated by distractions, shocks, or incomplete 
and faulty adaptations, or fails of exercise, owing to the nar- 
rowness of the field of consciousness and the slowness and 
smallness of its changes. — J. Ward: Article Psychology; Enc. 
Brit. 

2 Flint: Human Physiology, p. 171. H. Newell Martin, 
The Human Body, p. 19. 



68 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

The mountain-climber, scaling a cliff, keeps 
his eye on the path at his feet rather than on the 
heights above him. It is enough that a view 
of the summit should give him his bearings. 

Taking, then, each end by itself, the pleasure 
attainable in the pursuit of an end depends on the 
effectiveness of the pursuit as we advance to 
achievement. And achievement crowns the satis- 
faction. The structures temporally co-ordinated 
for the accomplishment of the end have done their 
office, and the function being duly discharged 
the subject is so far satisfied. The function has 
generated its modicum of feeling. 

But, as we have said, no aim can be completely 
isolated. Each particular aim is to be considered 
in its bearing on the general aims of life. And 
ends, even when successfully achieved, are of un- 
equal affectional worth. Just as we find grounds 
for choice as among sensory functions the form 
of which has been fixed by the structure of the 
physical system, so we may choose among those 
more variable and complex functions the form 
of which is for the time being fixed by means of 
a volitional idea or preconceived end. We are 
constitutionally predisposed to find certain ends 
more pleasurable than others . And end s in general 
may be made more effective, and therefore more 
pleasurable, by organisation. It remains for us 
to consider, then, how the principle of conscious 
choice bears on the choice and organisation of ends. 



SECTION III 

Organisation of Volitional Ends 

CHAPTER VII 

EXAMINATION OF METHODS AND PRINCIPLES OF 

ORGANISATION: HARMONY, REASON, THE MORAL 

SENSE, SELF-DEVELOPMENT 

IN any analysis of the conscious life the tendency 
is all but inevitable to isolate the results of our 
analysis. The painstaking psychologist is misled 
by his pains. He atomises. The various aspects 
of our psychic activity tend under his scrutiny 
to become distinct and concrete. Sensation, 
judgment, will, and other abstractions are hypos- 
tatised and treated as independent powers in a 
psychic federation. It is well to be reminded, 
therefore, from time to time, that the individual 
with all his qualities must himself be present 
to exhibit any given quality or to discharge any 
particular function. The general system is pre- 
supposed in each of its parts. 

We must conceive of the conscious life, more- 
over, as in effect a continuous life. True, the 
threads which bind its successive states are 

6 9 



7o Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

often unseen, and sleep gives daily pause to its 
waking phases. But in the psycho-physical sys- 
tem of which the conscious state is an aspect the 
causal relation, broadly conceived, is, we may 
fairly assume, never disrupted; that is to say, 
each conscious state is through this system 
related to and conditioned by the preceding 
states, and stands itself in like systematic con- 
nection with the states which follow. 1 

To look at life, therefore, as a mere succession 
of independent moments, or to estimate the value 
of any phase of experience by its immediate 
aflectional result, is to ignore an essential law of 
life. No sound theory of conduct can be derived 
from a view of the merely dislocated elements 
of conduct. The biologist might as well attempt 
to spell out the laws of the physical life by break- 
ing up the corporeal system and studying the 
fragments. 2 The delights of the voluptuary, the 
pains of discipline, are to be reckoned with their 
sequel. Each succeeding moment marks the 
transition from phase to phase of a continuous 
vital act ; and its value can be estimated only as 

1 L'individtialite' psychique et rindividualite" physiologique 
sont paralleles ... la conscience s'unifie ou se disperse avec 
l'organisme. — Ribot: Maladies de la Personnalite, p. 157. 

2 Wer will was Lebendigs erkennen und beschreiben 
Sticht erst den Geist herauszutreiben; 

Dann hat er die Theile in seiner Hand, 
Fehlt, leider! nur das geistige Band. 

Goethe: Faust. 



Principles of Organisation 71 

it is considered in relation to this continuous 
act. 

But this unitary system which, viewed as a 
natural product, is so completely organised, ex- 
hibits great inconsistency and inconstancy in 
the pursuit of its conscious aims. The conscious 
life, considered by itself, is short-sighted, vacil- 
lating, irrational. It is guided by no fixed princi- 
ple and requires reorganisation under the guidance 
of a principle. 

But we are not even agreed as to our principle. 
The theoretical difficulty is perhaps not the 
greatest of our difficulties. It is harder, appar- 
ently, to train our feet to keep the path than to 
discover the path; but it must be admitted that 
a sound theory, if held with conviction, would 
be a valuable aid to the establishment of a sound 
practice. We may say, in fact, that our practice 
is bad because, to a greater extent possibly than 
most of us are willing to allow, we are really un- 
convinced of the soundness of the principles 
in which we have been reared and to which we 
loosely adhere. At any rate all schools of ethical 
thought agree in the demand for a principle of 
unity in the conscious conduct of life, and each 
school offers such a principle. A brief review of 
the leading types of ethical theory may be of use, 
therefore, in familiarising our minds with the mat- 
ter of ethical inquiry and in strengthening and de- 
veloping the theory we have outlined and defended. 



72 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

It has been held that we have in the idea of 
Harmony an adequate principle of conduct. 1 
If we should control the intent of our acts, it is 
urged, so as to suppress all internal conflict, the 
life could not fail to be guided aright. This 
principle is recognised, among others, in the 
penetrating but somewhat imaginative treatment 
which the problems of conduct receive at the 
hands of Plato. 2 And interpreted and supple- 
mented, as it usually is, with reference to a 
standard which requires more than the mere sup- 
pression of conflict, the principle is of undoubted 
practical value and approaches very closely to the 
principle here maintained. But it needs inter- 
pretation and supplement. 

The term "harmony" is, in the first place, 

i An interest in something is of an immediate character: 
signifies therefore: its harmony or disharmony with the im- 
pulse is felt in advance of all reasoning. But I feel only my- 
self, and hence the harmony or disharmony must be in myself, 
or must be simply a harmony or disharmony with myself. 
— Johann Gottlieb Fichte: The Science of Ethics, pp. 150- 
151 (Kroeger's tr.). 

Volitions, therefore, when judged practically, are judged 
by the anticipated harmony or discord which they tend 
to produce in the character of the agent. — Shadworth H. 
Hodgson: Metaphysic of Experience, book iii., chap, vi., 
p. 66. 

2 The just man does not permit the several elements 
within him to meddle with one another, or any of them 
to do the work of others, but he sets in order his own inner 
life, and is his own master, and at peace with himself, etc. 
— Plato: Republic, 443, D. E. (Jowett's tr.). 



Principles of Organisation 73 

figurative. 1 And even in its primary sense, that 
is, as applied to the relations or effects of sound, 
it refers us to a standard in human sensibility. 
The harmony must be felt. Harmonious sounds 
are sounds which when heard together satisfy 
"the ear." Investigation may disclose mathe- 
matical or other relations among the aerial vibra- 
tions to which we refer the sounds, but this does 
not justify us in identifying the harmonious qual- 
ity of the sounds with any such relations. It is 
only within a limited range that the vibrations 
are perceived at all as sound, and the sounds 
would certainly not be harmonious, whatever the 
character of the waves to which we refer them, 
if they had no power to please. To determine 
whether they are harmonious or not they must 
be tried by a certain standard, and this standard 
must be sought, ultimately, in the form of the 
human sense. 

If now, by a figure, we apply the term "har- 
monious" to a certain concurrence of tendencies 
in the acts of the individual, the term will be of 
little use in suggesting a norm of conduct unless 

1 Another Source of mutual Misapprehension on this Sub- 
ject hath been "the introduction of metaphorical Expressions 
instead of proper ones." Nothing is so common among the 
Writers on Morality, as "the Harmony of Virtue" — "the 
Proportion of Virtue." . . . This figurative manner tends to 
mislead us. . . . It induceth a Persuasion that Virtue is 
excellent without Regard to any of its Consequences. — John 
Brown: On the Motives to Virtue, Essay II., sec. vi. 



74 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

reference is made to some subjective test, some 
form of feeling. It is not enough to show that our 
acts reinforce one another, or, if such a thing 
were possible, never conflict. A conflict may 
be ended by the subjugation of a contestant. 
Any imperious principle, a selfish ambition, say, or 
the propensity to mere animal satisfaction, may 
become paramount, subduing all the more generous 
instincts and establishing in the soul a peace 
which might be called harmony, but which were 
ethically the peace of desolation. Harmony in 
this barren sense would be consistent with ex- 
tremely poor values in feeling, and would afford 
us no principle by which to determine, as among 
conflicting types, the true form of the human type. 
Consistency would be the only virtue, and we 
might be as the cat or the tiger, consistently self- 
ish or ferocious. Self-preservation might be the 
first and the last law of nature. And like criticism 
applies to those who seek their ethical principle 
in some law which harmonises different wills, 1 
without explicit reference to the nature or test 
of the harmony desired. 

This criticism would be obviated if, dropping 
the figure, we should interpret the term ' ' harmony" 

1 The ultimate aim of life cannot be merely the extension of 
the power to realise the wills that are active about us, but 
must at last be found by defining the course of action that 
best harmonises these wills. — Josiah Royce: Tlie Religious 
Aspect of Philosophy, p. 174. — Harmonize thy will with the 
world's Will. — The World mid the Individual, vol. ii., p. 348. 



Principles of Organisation 75 

by reference to a subjective test analogous to the 
test to which sounds are submitted, and where 
harmony is adopted as an ethical principle 
some such test is actually implied. But the test 
is affectional. The soul must be "satisfied," 
and the harmony is perfect only when the soul 
is completely satisfied, or, in other words, when 
the feeling has that maximum worth which in 
ethical discourse is called "blessedness." And 
so interpreted or supplemented, the principle 
of harmony becomes identical with the principle 
here maintained. 

Turning now to another school of thinkers, we 
find them looking to Reason for the principle 
of ethical distinctions, that is, to the reason 
regarded as a several and independent faculty 
of the mind. Reason, so conceived, and the 
moral nature are correlatives : man is moral because 
he has reason, reason furnishing both the ground 
and the motive for moral discrimination. Con- 
sciousness in the brute, it is held, serves only 
the brutish end, the conservation of the animal 
self, and it is determined to this end through the 
brute's sensibility to pleasure and pain. Your 
animal is thus your only consistent hedonist. 
But reason, in this view, marks the advent in man 
of a new principle, overriding the merely animal 
impulsion, and disclosing for the first time in 
the animate series the distinction between right 
and wrong. And moral distinctions when thus 



76 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

recognised are, according to this contention, 
recognised as ultimate. The authority of the 
reason which discloses them is accepted as an 
indisputable fact of our nature and as supreme. 1 
The reason, upon this theory, has nothing in 
common with the animal nature: it simply over- 

» Handle so, dass die Maxime deines Willens jederzeit 
zugleich als Prinzip einer allgemeinen Gesetzgebung gelten 
konne. . . . Man kann das Bewusstsein dieses Grundgesetzes 
ein Faktum der Vernunft nennen. — Immanuel Kant: Kr. 
der Prakt. Vernunft, book i., sec. 7. 

Hugo Grotius: De Jure Belli et Pacts, liber, i., cap. ii., i., 
1, 2, 3. 

Ralph Cudworth : A Treatise concerning Eternal and Im- 
mutable Morality, book i., chap. ii. 

Richard Price: A Review of the Principal Questions, etc., 
in Morals, chap. i. 

Samuel Clarke: Discourse upon Natural Religion. 

The Reason is not only the faculty by which we reason from 
fundamental principles when we have anyhow attained 
and assumed these; it is also the faculty by which we appre- 
hend fundamental principles. — William Whewell : Elements of 
Morality, book i., chap, i., art. 10. 

Reason is the self -objectifying consciousness. It consti- 
tutes, as we have seen, the capability in man of seeking 
an absolute good and of conceiving this good as common to 
others with himself : and it is this capability which alone ren- 
ders him a possible author and a self-submitting subject 
of law. — T. H. Green: Prol. to Ethics, book iii., chap, iii., 
p. 214. 

Reason itself supplies the principles of rectitude, which 
cannot be reached by induction from experience, as all rules 
of expediency are. — H. Calderwood: Philos. Rev., July, 
1896, p. 338. 

The ethical function of Reason is sovereign and legis- 
lative. — James Seth: Intern. Jour, of Ethics, July, 1896, p. 423. 



Principles of Organisation 77 

rules it. And there is, in this view, nothing in the 
moral nature which can be analysed into simpler 
elements, or which can be regarded as a develop- 
ment from some principle of natural action less 
specific and complex. The appearance of reason 
and the moral nature marks a saltus in the natural 
series. 

This view of the matter was not unnatural in 
the earlier stages of psychological inquiry. An 
ethical principle for which no solvent had been 
found was thus in a sort accounted for. It was 
an ultimate fact, marking the assumption rather 
than the development of a new nature, and involv- 
ing by consequence subjection to a new code 
of laws. But gaps in our knowledge of the devel- 
opmental series are not gaps in the series itself, 
and as these gaps are filled in by a comparative 
study of the forms of conscious life man's reason 
appears rather as a growth than as a sudden and 
special creation. We cannot regard it now as 
a unique and underived faculty imposing upon 
the natural propensities an alien and absolute 
law. It includes under one general term all the 
abstracting, discriminating, comparing, and re- 
flective processes of the mind. Reason, indeed, 
is scarcely separable from any grade or phase of 
intelligence. Merely to perceive is to interpret. 1 
There is therefore an inferential or rational ele- 

1 Perception is an attempt at interpretation. — H. Hoflding: 
Outlines of Psychology, p. 207 (Lowndes). 



78 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

ment implicit in perception, and we must concede 
this element in germinal form to the intelligence 
even of the brute. 

But to concede so much is not to assume that 
there is nothing distinctive and characteristic 
in human reason. For the higher or more com- 
plex instances of the inferential process we must 
look to the treatment of abstract conceptions, 
which are derived primarily from the materials of 
perception. For the formation of such concep- 
tions language is essential. l And since the thought 
of man alone is articulate, the main exemplification 
of the rational consciousness, including the forma- 
tion of moral concepts, is to be sought for in the 
operations of the human mind. Thought which 
is inarticulate wants more than the means of ex- 
pression. It wants the power of analysis and also 
that capacity for constructive activity which de- 
pends for its materials on the results of analysis. 
Hence the extreme simplicity of brute intelligence 
as compared with that of man. The gap between 
the two is wide. But it were rash to assert that 
no developmental process can span it. Reason, 
the capacity for inferential thought, being implicit 

1 When we remember that thought is in a large measure 
internal speech, and that the abstract relations and qualities 
of objects are inseparably bound up with words, we can 
readily see that we may call up the images symbolised in 
words, however abstract they may be, by making the articula- 
tory movements in which we have symbolised them. — 
Ferrier: Functions of the Brain, chap, xii., sec. 17 (2d ed.). 



Principles of Organisation 79 

in perception, must exist in elemental form far 
below the level of human intelligence, and must 
be assumed to develop with the development of 
the conscious life and with the increasing supply of 
matter to which it can be applied. It is a capacity 
which grows. 

And if the capacity to reason is itself a growth 
we have little ground to doubt that the moral prin- 
ciples assumed to have been disclosed by the reason 
have been developed or revealed by a like gradual 
process. Proof of this development would appear 
in a resolution of such principles into simpler 
constituents. Such a resolution or analysis we 
have undertaken in this thesis. 

There is, however, another form of the general 
theory of morals which presents moral distinctions 
as ultimate. Reason, it is urged, is not the bearer 
of ends at all. It can only distinguish, compare, 
and define among ends already determined in the 
mind or in the constitution in which it is operative. 
Nor can it, without a criterion which reason may 
find but does not bring, assign a superior or an 
inferior place to any given end. 1 Reason has in 
itself no preferences. Given an end, reason 
discloses, upon a review of the whole situation, the 

1 It appears evident, that the ultimate ends of human 
actions can never, in any case, be accounted for by reason, 
but recommend themselves entirely to the sentiments and 
affections of mankind, without any dependence on the 
intellectual faculties. — David Hume: Inquiry concerning the 
Principles of Morals, App. i. 



80 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

fittest means for the attainment of the end ; and 
reason, upon due consideration of our actions, 
may point out their probable results. But why 
one end should be preferred to another depends, 
it is said, upon no merely reflective or rational 
process, but upon a form of human sensibility. 
And this sense, as applied to moral relations, is 
specific and unique. Right and wrong are not, 
in this view, as they are in some forms of rational- 
istic ethics, distinctions inherent in our acts them- 
selves, or deducible from the objective relations of 
any act ; nor is the principle of moral distinctions 
one which we may resolve into non-moral or pre- 
moral elements. To make such distinctions is 
the office of a special sense, and we are sensible 
in making them of an inward preference for that 
which we feel to be right even when as a matter 
of fact we choose the wrong. And this special 
sense has been called the Moral Sense. 1 



1 Moral Distinctions deriv'd from a Moral Sense. — To have 
the sense of virtue, is nothing but to feel a satisfaction of a 
particular kind from the contemplation of a character. The 
very feeling constitutes our praise or admiration. . . . The 
case is the same as in our judgments concerning all kinds 
of beauty, and tastes and sensations. — David Hume: A 
Treatise of Human Nature, book iii., part i., sec. ii. 

This moral Sense, either of our own Actions, or of those 
of others, has this in common with our other Senses, that 
however our Desire of Virtue may be counterballanc'd by 
Interest, our Sentiment or Perception of its Beauty cannot; 
as it certainly might be, if the only Ground of our Approbation 
were Views of Advantage. — Francis Hutcheson: An Inquiry 



Principles of Organisation 81 

The theory of a Moral Sense, it will be seen, 
may be made the basis of Intuitionism, which 
holds to an immediate apprehension of the para- 
mount law of conduct, as readily as Rationalism. 
And it is open to the same fundamental objection 
as that which we urged against Rationalism: it 
halts in its analysis, and makes that ultimate which 
later inquiry shows to be derived. So far as it 
refers us to a subjective standard it is doubtless 
right. We have ourselves found it necessary 
to refer to such a standard ; but we have placed 
it in the affective or general evaluative aspect 
of consciousness, which is broader and more 
elementary than moral feeling, and which only 

concerning the original of our ideas of Virtue or Moral Good, 
Sec. i. (British Moralists, vol. i.) 

Human actions . . . are further distinguished in our 
perception of them, as fit, right, and meet to be done, or as 
unfit, unmeet, and wrong to be done. . . . The power or 
faculty by which we perceive this difference among actions, 
passeth under the name of the moral sense. — Henry Home, 
Lord Kames : Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural 
Religion, Essay II., chap. ii. (Brit. Mor., vol. ii.) 

To this ultimate fact . . . we must always come in 
estimating virtue, whatever analysis we may make or think 
that we have made. It is in this respect, as in many others, 
like the kindred emotion of beauty. — Thomas Brown : Lectures 
on Ethics, p. 20. (Edin., 1846.) 

Our knowledge of the Supreme Excellence . . . springs 
from that instinctive or moral nature, which is as truly a 
part of our being as is our reason, and which teaches us what 
reason could never teach, the supreme and transcendent excel- 
lence of moral good. — William Edward Hartpole Lecky : Hist, 
of Eur. Morals, chap, i., p. 56. 

6 



82 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

in specific relations, as we shall see, becomes moral 
feeling. The theory we are considering, on the 
other hand, makes moral distinctions elementary, 
and endows the mind with an irresoluble faculty 
for marking these distinctions. Like Rationalism, 
the theory of a Moral Sense assumes to be at the 
end of the road because it can itself go no farther. 
Both theories, therefore, while they have many 
practical merits, betray the same defective analysis, 
the same psychological weakness. And both 
might be harmonised with the theory of this essay 
if their ultimate terms were broken up into their 
psychological elements. 

Starting from a different point of view there 
appears another main tendency of ethical thought 



The feeling which determines conduct is not a judgment 
at all, though it is inseparably bound up with serious judg- 
ments. It is a simple unanalysable fact. — Leslie Stephen: 
The Science of Ethics, chap, ii., p. 57. 

By Morals or Ethic I mean the doctrine of a special kind 
of pleasure or displeasure, which is felt by the human mind 
in contemplating certain courses of conduct, whereby they 
are felt to be right or wrong, and of a special desire to do 
the right things and avoid the wrong ones. — William Kingdon 
Clifford: Lectures and Essays, vol. i., p. 106. 

To the implicit beliefs secreted within our moral conscious- 
ness let precisely so much be conceded as we readily grant 
to the testimony of perception, and it will appear that, in 
learning ourselves, we discover also what is beyond and 
above ourselves. If then we can but state accurately the 
essence of the moral sentiments, and find the propositions 
they assume, we reach the last resorts of theoretic truth. 
— James Martineau: Types of Ethical Theory, vol. ii., p. 9. 



Principles of Organisation 83 

which, under the name of Self-realisation or 
Self -development, finds its organising principle 
in the form of the conscious organism itself. 1 
With this point of view we are already familiar. 
The human organism, it is averred, is a complex 
instrument, and we have only to consider the 
nature of this instrument, or the form of the self, 
to determine its use. Self-development would 
follow then from a sustained and consistent appli- 
cation of the self as instrument to its use so 
determined. 

But the possibilities of the psycho-physical 
system are, as we have seen, so vast that no 
mere inspection of the instrument will dis- 
close its use with such definiteness as to re- 
veal the law of conduct. In the field of 



1 It [the doctrine of goods] will . . . regard as the highest 
good, stating it in a general formula, a perfect life, that is, 
a life leading to the complete development of the bodily and 
mental powers, and to their full exercise in all the spheres of 
human existence, etc. — Friedrich Paulsen: A System of 
Ethics, p. 4 (Thilly's tr). 

If we have any rational end at all it must consist in some 
kind of realisation of our nature as a whole. — John S. Mc- 
Kenzie: Introduction to Social Philosophy, p. 255. 

Moral good may be defined in general as conduct conducive 
to the natural good or perfection of the agent and those 
persons affected by his action. — Edith Simcox : Natural Law, 
p. 105. 

The final end with which morality is identified, or under 
which it is included, can be expressed not otherwise than 
by self-realisation. — F. H. Bradley: Ethical Studies, Essay II., 
p. 59 (Anas, reprint). 



84 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

volitional conduct this use must be learned 
from a consideration of ends. True, the self 
which is to be realised is itself an end, a repre- 
sentation or an ideal of the manner of man one 
fain would become. But the theory requires 
a definite and fairly consistent idea of this end, 
without which the idea of self-realisation re- 
mains vague and as a directive and shaping in- 
fluence ineffective. 

Such an idea of the self maybe virtually present, 
however, without being explicitly recognised or 
grasped as a whole. It may operate piecemeal, as 
it were. Certain acts and attitudes seem ad- 
mirable, certain others seem despicable and 
unworthy of the self. And the fact that we have 
in the affective life, or the feelings, a constantly 
available test of the value of our experience 
and acts compels us to put a practical gloss on 
all our theories and tacitly adjust them to the facts 
of life. We unwittingly assume in our theories 
that which is never wanting in our lives. And 
with the aid of such gloss and silent comment the 
theory of self-development acquires a form and 
completeness which cannot, without supple- 
ment , be found in the theory itself. The necessary 
supplement of this theory is a true conception 
of the self as end to be realised. But this ideal 
self is not simply given. It is a construction, and 
varies in form; and it stands itself in need of a 
principle to determine the true law of its con- 



Principles of Organisation 85 

struction. 1 And such a principle it might find 
in what we have suggested as the law of conscious 
choice. 

1 The Self in Psychology seems always to be identified 
with some positive content, and not always with the same. — 
B. Bosanquet: Psychology of the Moral Self, p. 8 (London, 
1897). 

The end may therefore in all conscious action be said to be 
self-realisation, though the nature of this end differs accord- 
ing to each man's conception of self. — W. R. Sorley: On the 
Ethics of Naturalism, p. 287. 



CHAPTER VIII 

PLEASURE AS AN ORGANISING PRINCIPLE 

IT remains now to consider the theory that 
the organising principle which alone can 
give full value to life and furnish a basis for 
morals is happiness or pleasure. This theory, 
which has assumed different forms and gone under 
different names, is as old as ethical discussion, 
and the ethical student needs only to be reminded 
of its main contention, namely, that pleasure is 
itself the supreme and ultimate end. A word 
of explanation may be necessary, however, to 
show its relation to our own contention. And 
to save time we may refer to this theory generally 
as hedonism, using the term in as broad a sense 
as we have used the word pleasure. 

Much of the criticism which has been directed 
against hedonism is properly directed against the 
assumption, common to hedonists and to their 
opponents alike, that feeling is a detachable 
concrete psychical state. But feeling, as we have 
seen, is an abstraction. It is never wholly free 
from certain elements of intellection and conation, 
and cannot as a motive be effectively presented 

86 



Pleasure as an Organising Principle 87 

to the mind except as associated with a sensation, 
percept, or idea, or whatever constitutes its gen- 
erating function. 1 But it is assumed that we 
are capable of detaching from the idea of a 
pleasurable function, as of the eye or the ear, 
the idea of pleasure, and of erecting this idea 
into a separable end, from which the discharge 
of the function may be distinguished as means. 

» Pleasure, we must remember, is an abstraction, and only 
to be found in the concrete complexity of mental life. — B. 
Bosanquet: Psychology of the Moral Self, p. 81. 

On passing from compound reflex actions to those actions so 
highly compounded as to be imperfectly reflex . . . we pass 
to a kind of mental action which is one of Memory, Reason, 
Feeling, or Will, according to the side of it we look at. — Her- 
bert Spencer: Prin. of Psychology, I., chap, ix., sec. 217 (1876). 

The impulse is essentially determined by an idea, is a 
striving after the content of this idea. In hunger, e.g., the 
impulse has reference primarily to the food, not to the feeling 
of pleasure in its consumption. — H. Hoffding: Outlines of 
Psych., vii., B, 1, a, p. 323 (Lowndes.) 

It [pleasure] is not something by itself, which we can choose 
rather than something else as we may select a peach instead 
of an apple. We must aim not at pleasure per se, but at 
objects which we have reason to believe will be accompanied 
by pleasurable feeling. — W. R. Sorley: Ethics of Naturalism, 
pp. 187, 188. 

All human pleasure is pleasure in something. It is true 
that if that something gave no pleasure, we should not 
be able to value it; but still, seeing that it does please us, 
we do value it, and not simply the pleasure that it yields. — J. 
S. McKenzie: Outlines of Metaphysics, p. 126. 

The springs of conscious activity, or the incentives to 
volition, are present or ideally revived sensations and their 
accompaniments. — Ferrier: Functions of the Brain, chap, xii., 
sec. 5 (2d ed). 



88 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

In different ways one enjoys, for example, a glass 
of wine, or low music, or the invention of a story 
or of some mechanical device; and one can esti- 
mate the degree of enjoyment, it is supposed, as 
a distinct quantum, disengaged from any thought 
of the wine, or the music, or the plot or plan of 
our work. The actual conscious state, indissoluble 
in fact, is in conception broken up into its several 
aspects, and it is assumed that one of these aspects, 
to wit, pleasure, may be conceived as in factual 
independence, subjected to quantitative estimate 
and comparison, and set up as a separable object 
of volition or desire. The abstract is thus dealt 
with as concrete. Pleasure is taken simply as a 
lot or quantum of feeling, to be listed with other 
like lots and measured by such standards as are 
conceived to be applicable to pure feeling. And 
practical wisdom lies, according to this contention, 
in choosing the most effective means of making 
over to one's self that several lot of pleasure 
which, upon a fair computation, shows in biggest 
bulk. 

It cannot be denied, of course, that "pleasures," 
in the sense of pleasurable sensations, diversions, 
or occupations, may be dealt with as wholes more 
or less distinct and subjected to comparative treat- 
ment. But "pleasure" as mere feeling is to be 
distinguished from "pleasures" so understood as 
the abstract is distinguished from the concrete; 
and the error lies in assuming that the bare idea 



Pleasure as an Organising Principle 89 

of pleasure constitutes in deliberative choice the 
true volitional idea. The bare idea of this feeling, 
as we may be convinced by inspection, does not 
exist, and neither feeling nor the idea of feeling 
can be called up independently of any idea of the 
object or experience which gives rise to the feeling ; 
much less can it furnish an incentive to volitional 
action. And this is equally true whether we are 
speaking of revived or anticipated feeling. To 
awaken one's pleasure in a flower one must recall 
in idea the characters of the flower, its colour, 
its fragrance, its form. One does not revive the 
feeling first, or independently of the impressions 
by which the feeling was originally evoked ; the 
idea of these impressions must first be revived, 
and the feeling returns as a fresh product of such 
ideation. So we may explain the force of mere 
words. Language as the common vehicle of ideas 
becomes the common vehicle of feeling, and the 
medium through which orator, dramatist, and 
poet touch the sentiments and play upon the 
passions of mankind. 1 

1 It is impossible to attend to pleasantness-unpleasantness 
as such. ... It is impossible to voluntarily recall a past affec- 
tive state as such. . . . Spontaneous revival of a past affective 
state as such is also impossible. Where this purports to have 
taken place, external (associational) suggestion has repro- 
duced the ideational substrate of the state in question. — E. B. 
Titchener: Philosophical Rev., Jan., 1895. 

In the same article Titchener cites Lehmann in Haupt- 
gesetze des Menschlichen Gefuhlslebens, p. 262, as follows: 



90 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

But though the will must be directed by the 
idea of an end, ends may be mote or less definite. 
They may indeed be extremely vague, but if 
the idea is indefinite the activities initiated by the 
idea will be ill-organised or indefinite. And ends 
may be grouped, that is, may be more or less gen- 
eral. Under the idea of "wealth," for instance, 
we may symbolise the ends which we desire and 
conceive to be attainable through wealth. So 
we may group loosely under the general term 
" pleasure " the particular class of pleasures to 
which we are prone. But the volitional idea in 
such case, however we may generalise, is not the 
mere abstract idea of pleasure, but an idea more 
or less definable of the pursuits or functions in 
which pleasure inheres. A volition is never 
simply the will to be pleased. As a practical 
function it is the will to have or to do or to ex- 
perience some certain thing which shall satisfy 
or please. 1 

"Gefiihlstone konnen dadurch reproduziert werden, dass die 
Vorstellungen, mit welchen sie verbunden gewesen sind, 
wiedererzeugt werden." 

The necessity of an objective principle, or norm, is further 
suggested by the fact that one is totally unable to produce 
directly any desired sensibility mode. By an act of will, 
one cannot inaugurate immediately a feeling of satisfaction 
of any kind whatever. — Walter G. Everett: The Concept of 
the Good; Philos. Rev., Sept., 1898. 

1 Movements are really willed only when they are made 
with a definite intention and directed to a definite end. — H. 
Hoffding: Outlines of Psychology, p. 320 (Lowndes). 



Pleasure as an Organising Principle 91 

It would seem, then, that the primary source 
of feeling lies in the sensation or the idea, or in 
some function to which the psycho-physical 
system must react in order that feeling may be 
generated. And yet it often happens, apparently, 
that the idea follows the feeling. As we feel, 
grave or gay, so we think; and the character of 
our thoughts seems to depend generally upon 
the exaltation or the depression of our spirits. 
The dyspeptic habit, for instance, which is marked 
by painful organic sensations, is no less distinctly 
marked by the painful tone of the dyspeptic's 
ideas. In fact, we have all felt the effect of a 
dominant mood in restricting the range of ideas 
to such as accord with the mood. With the 
system tempered to a certain emotional tone 
we seem to be more or less impervious to ideas of a 
different tone. The feeling appears to react on 
the ideational sources of feeling. 

This reaction depends doubtless on the inhib- 
itory force of the expressive and motor accom- 
paniments of feeling. Expression in any emotional 
key naturally inhibits the expression of any incon- 
gruous feeling, and through this inhibition sup- 
presses, for the time being, the ideas which 
must express themselves, if at all, through such 
incongruous feeling. The sensation, or the idea 
(which is sometimes called an internal sensation), 
apparently forms with its affectional and motor 
reactions a psycho-physical unit. Obstruct the 



92 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

reaction and you obstruct the whole function. 1 
Dam the outlet and you stop the current. And 
you may obstruct a function by action incom- 
patible with its discharge even more effectively 
than by a direct effort to repress it. 2 Freedom 
in one direction is inhibition in another. The 
emotional expression of the dyspeptic's painful 
sensations inhibits the antagonistic expression, 
and therewith the conception, of pleasurable ideas. 
While, therefore, we may regard feeling as in 
direct relation with the idea upon which it attends, 
we have reason to believe that it is only indirectly 
related to the idea which it seems to suggest. 
The direct course of suggestion is from idea to 
idea. 3 And to inspire or to revive a particular 

• Empfindungen . . . sind lebhaft und eindringlich, wenn 
die Entladungsbahn der sensorischen Erregung in dem 
subkortikalen motorischen Centrum, zu dem sie fuhrt, keinen 
Widerstand findet. Die Empfindung anderseits ist gehemmt, 
wenn die Entladungsbahn der sensorischen Erregung zu 
einem subkortikalen motorischen Centrum fuhrt, welches 
wegen der gleichzeitig ablaufenden Erregung des antagonist- 
ischen Centrums selber gehemmt ist und so der Entladung 
Widerstand entgegensetzt. — Hugo Miinsterberg: Grundzuge 
der PsychoLogie, Band i, S. 536-537. 

2 II semble done, si on fait l'hypothese que la duree de 
prononciation donne une mesure de la facility de prononcia- 
tion, qu'il est plus facile de remplacer un £tat moteur d'articu- 
lation par un autre 6 tat que de supprimer completement cet 
e"tat moteur. — Binet et Henri: Rev. Philos., 1894, xxxvii., 
p. 614. 

3 The combination of ideas seems therefore to be the 
channel through which the feelings mingle with one another. 
. . . Every idea has, indeed, its 'special feeling, but this always 



Pleasure as an Organising Principle 93 

feeling we must first reach the source of the 
feeling in the idea or functional act upon which 
the feeling depends. 

Pleasure, we conclude then, or happiness, can- 
not as mere feeling be made the end of volitional 
action, and cannot, therefore, serve as the basis 
of a system which undertakes the control of vo- 
litional conduct. The structure of the conscious 
organism is such that the bare idea of feeling, 
if such a thing exists, cannot in itself constitute 
an end. In fact, were a desired feeling present, 
and were the attempt made to direct attention to 
the feeling alone with a view to prolonging its 
presence, the effort would initiate a new functional 
process, the original feeling would be dissipated, 
and a different affectional state would be induced. 
Hence the apparent paradox that pleasure the 
sooner arrives the less it is thought of, that happi- 
ness the more surely eludes us the more intently, 
as happiness, it is pursued. Pleasure, in a word, 
attests the normal discharge of a function, and, 
evading direct pursuit, demands that our thoughts 
and energies be directed to the function which 
generates it. Activities, not feelings, are the 
direct objects of the will. 

breaks its force on the feeling previously prevailing, and its 
effect is determined through the latter. . . . Feelings are 
remembered by means of the ideas with which they were 
originally linked, and in conjunction with which they com- 
posed a certain conscious state. — H. Hoffding: Outlines of 
Psychology, pp. 240, 241 (Lowndes' tr.). 



94 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

If, therefore, happiness is made an object of 
desire, it must be conceived in such a sense that 
it does not impose on me the lifelong task of 
watching my subjective symptoms, with my 
finger for ever on the pulse of feeling. It must 
be conceived only as a product of the various 
activities of the subject. And this is doubtless 
the interpretation which in practice the hedonist 
puts upon his theory. But the effect of ordinary 
hedonistic teaching is to give a false tendency 
to the thought by directing it too exclusively 
to the merely affectional aspect of conduct. Hence 
the strength of the critic's position who insists that 
hedonism is philosophically unsound, and that 
the idea of happiness is an idea which it were 
best to banish from our minds. The constant 
effort to gauge the emotional value of life reduces 
the effectiveness of the very activities upon which 
this emotional value depends. 

But we cannot assume, as the critic of hedonism 
is wont to assume, that principles of conduct may 
be framed apart from any consideration of feeling. 
Ends we must have. A man must have some 
intelligible notion of what he means to do, or of 
the ends to which his energies shall be directed. 
But how shall he choose an end to which he is 
indifferent ? We aim at an end because it interests 
us, and interest is but feeling centred in a definite 
object. It is feeling, that is, the emotional tone 
or accompaniment of our activities, which gives life 



Pleasure as an Organising Principle 95 

its value, and any organising principle which shall 
ensure for life its maximum value must be framed , 
of necessity, with ultimate reference to feeling. 
Such, at least, is our contention. Though it is 
impracticable to constitute an end of the abstract 
idea of feeling, life for the conscious subject has 
in it nothing that he should desire it except as 
attested by feeling. That it interests him means 
that it offers him ends or objects in seeking which 
he takes satisfaction or pleasure ; and it interests 
him most, or is most desirable, when the pleasure 
or satisfaction is most complete. 



CHAPTER IX 

COMPARISON AND ESTIMATE OP PLEASURABLE 
FUNCTIONS 

INASMUCH, then, as our interest in an object 
or end is the ultimate ground of preference, 
the mere idea of an object, without affectional 
tone, were as powerless to influence choice as were 
the abstract idea of feeling. An end must in some 
sense interest us, or promise some sort of satis- 
faction, or it can submit no claim for volitional 
preference: wanting the elements of value, it 
leaves us indifferent, that is, without incentive 
to choice. 

Not that choice proper, involving a comparison 
of values, must precede every conscious act. The 
tendency of thought is always to act itself out. 1 
The idea is the initial stage of the act. And the 
mere observation or intimation of an act, sug- 
gesting the thought of it, suggests the act also, 
that is, initiates the movements which, if not 
inhibited by acts or ideas incompatible with their 
continuance, will advance to their consummation 

• The tendency of an idea to become the reality is a distinct 
source of active impulses in the mind. — A. Bain: The Senses 
and the Intellect, p. 341. (London, 1868, 3d ed.) 

96 



Comparison of "Pleasures" 97 

in the act suggested. i Hence perhaps the tendency 
to imitate which we find in the young. They have 
as yet no controlling interest, their powers have 
not as yet been disciplined to the service of special 
ends or ideas, and out of the abundance of their 
energy they are ready to act upon the presentation 
of any idea which they are able to grasp and exe- 
cute. And even acts originally requiring volitional 
direction and choice tend by repetition to ap- 
proach the instinctive type. The feet of the 
practised dancer start involuntarily with the open- 
ing strains of a waltz. 

But there is in such suggested or impulsive 
action no deliberation, no appraisement of in- 
terests, no conscious appeal to any standard of 
values. Here therefore the principle of conscious 
choice is not involved. Or if it is urged that we 
still must choose, if only as between action and 
inaction, we may trace the affectional element 
even here as influencing the choice. There 
remains the interest of an active nature seeking 
satisfaction in the mere exercise of power. 

But the contention that choice is influenced 
by feeling is met by the objection that feeling, 
as a psychological fact, follows both the choice 

1 We may then lay it down for certain that every repre- 
sentation of a movement awakens in some degree the actual 
movement which is its object; and awakens it in a maximum 
degree whenever it is not kept from so doing by an antago- 
nistic representation present simultaneously to the mind. 
— W. James: Psychology, vol. ii., p. 526. 
7 



98 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

and the act. And how, it is asked, can the 
feeling to be generated in the attainment of an 
end not yet accomplished affect in advance of 
its own appearance my choice of such an end? 
How can future pleasure, in other words, operate 
as a present motive ? l 

Plainly feeling (or its physical concomitant) 
not yet existent cannot be the cause of acts which 
are now to be performed. Such a cause would 
be "final" in the most objectional sense. But 
no such retroactive causation need be assumed. 
Though the end and its attendant feeling lie yet 
in the future, the idea of the end with its 
emotional tone is a present fact. And the idea 
is a process, not an inert image lodged, as it were, 
in the mind ; it is a process too which, as common 
observation attests, may initiate present feeling. 
The prospect of a pleasing experience is itself 
and at the moment pleasing. But careful intro- 
spection seems to disclose that it is not feeling as a 
present fact, but the idea of a situation with 
future possibilities of feeling, which governs 
the choice and initiates action subservient to the 
end selected. In other words, it is not the pleasure 
of the idea, but the idea of the pleasure, that is, 



1 Even when we are acting with a direct view to our own 
future pleasure, it is, of course, the present pleasure at- 
tached to the idea of our future pleasure, not the futur e 
pleasure itself, which determines our action. — Dr. Ernest 
Albee: Philos. Review, July, 1897, p. 344. 



Comparison of " Pleasures " 99 

of the pleasurable function, which operates as a 
motive in volitional choice. 

But the whole subject-matter is obscured by 
our habit of interpreting psychical terms in a 
physical sense. We treat the feeling to which 
we ascribe the force of a motive as in effect a 
physical motor, an actual and present force, 
which is assumed to be necessary to impel the 
inert mass of the idea, itself conceived in a physi- 
cal sense, to its consummation in act. l But this 
application of mechanical concepts to psycho- 
physical experience is misleading. The human 
organism is not a mechanical system. It is indeed 
a storehouse of energy, and as such is subject to 
the laws which govern the transformations of 
energy. Force exerted is force transmuted in a 
definite ratio of equivalence. But the human 
system is a highly organised system, and it is 
organised, as we have seen, in accordance with a 
scheme which places the key to its volitional 
activities in the idea. Volitional choice is a choice 
of ideas. But as the worth of experience is 
measured in terms of feeling, the choice falls, 
so far as it is deliberately rather than reflexly 
or instinctively determined, on the idea of the 
object or end which is deemed likely to prove 

1 Pleasure is the mechanism or dynamic of choice. The 
energy or moving power of an idea lies in the feeling which 
it arouses. James Seth: 7s Pleasure the Summum Bonumf 
Intern. Jour, of Ethics, July, 1896. 



ioo Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

most satisfactory or pleasing. 1 And if, tracing 
the process on its physical side, the cause as 
a cerebral discharge seems inadequate, without 
the reinforcement which is implied in emotional 
excitement, to produce the effects which we 
see in muscular action, we have only to be 
reminded that the organism is itself a seat of 
energy. The question is one, not of the mere 
transmission of force, but of the liberation of 
forces latent in the system. And if the psycho- 
physical system has been organised to seek satis- 
faction through functional action, we cannot be 
surprised that the idea of that which will satisfy 
should be the index of cerebral changes adequate 
without further excitation to engage the activity 
of the whole motor system. 2 

But if, in order to determine the choice, ends 
must be compared in idea with respect to their 
affectional values, what method shall we follow in 



1 Volition proper is characterised psychologically by the 
ideas of the end of the action and the means to its realisation, 
and by a vivid feeling of the worth of that end. — H. Hoffding: 
Otvtlines of Psychology, p. 313 (Lowndes). 

2 It is a property of our intellectual nature, that for all 
purposes of action the remembrance, notion, or anticipation 
of a feeling, can operate in essentially the same way as the 
real presence. — Alexander Bain: The Emotions and the Will, 
3d ed., p. 354. (Appleton, 1876.) 

Consciousness is in its very nature impulsive. We do not 
have a sensation or a thought and then have to add some- 
thing dynamic to it to get a movement. — W. James: Psychol- 
ogy, vol. ii., p. 526. 



Comparison of " Pleasures" 101 

the comparison and determination of these values? 
What do we mean when we say that one thing is 
more pleasing, or gives us more pleasure, than 
another? Is the estimate quantitative? Can 
pleasures be computed in units of pleasure, or 
are they only qualitatively appreciated and pre- 
ferred? 

If we refer to the language of common life, it 
would seem that pleasures are compared in 
respect of both quantity and quality. There is 
no doubt, in the first place, that we distinguish 
them in respect of quality. We compare, for 
instance, the pleasures of golf, of study, of society, 
of philanthropic activity and self-sacrifice, in 
terms which imply that the pleasures so dis- 
tinguished are different in kind. So also with 
pains. There are the pains of hunger, of weariness, 
of disappointed ambition, of thwarted love. 

In the form in which it first invades conscious- 
ness the feeling of pleasure or of pain, so far as we 
can consider it by itself, seems to be a mode of 
sensibility which reports the inner or organic 
significance, as the special senses report the ex- 
ternal or objective significance, of any given 
impression or experience. And in its initial stage 
the feeling seems to share something of the dis- 
tinctions in quality or mode which mark the 
various functions with which it is associated. 
That is, it is qualitatively defined by the gen- 
erating function. The pleasures of sense differ 



102 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

in quality from one another, and from the pleasures 
of action; and all these differ, again, from the 
pleasures of the creative imagination or of specu- 
lative thought. The differences in the mode of the 
functional act are carried over to the immediate 
affective state, the feeling by first intention, so 
to speak, which is continuous with the functional 
act, and are thus felt to be inherent in the feeling. l 
To resolve away these differences we must ad- 
dress ourselves to feeling in the abstract, and 
psychologists who assume to deal with pure feeling 
find in it no differences of quality other than the 
difference between pleasure and pain. 2 And for 
ths purpose of psychological analysis such a 
conception of feeling may have its uses. But in 
ethics, which bears directly upon conduct or 

1 The quality or character of what is generally called a 
feeling or emotion comes from the sensations or cognitions 
that go with it. — B. Bosanquet: Psychology of the Moral 
Self, p. 63. (London, 1897.) 

2 As a matter of fact, there is no qualitative difference 
discoverable between the pleasantness of a colour and that 
of a successfully concluded argument, when careful ab- 
straction is made from the very wide differences in all their 
attendant circumstances. — Kiilpe: Outlines of Psychology, 
sec. 35, 1. . . . We are left with the simple qualities of 
pleasantness and unpleasantness, which refuse to admit of 
further subdivision. — lb., sec. 35,3. 

It seems to be true of pleasure as of pain, that in itself 
it exhibits no differences of kind, but that the differences 
in the pleasurable feelings spring out of the sensations or 
ideas accompanying them. — H. Hoffding: Outlines of Psy- 
chology, p. 224 (Lowndes). 



Comparison of " Pleasures" 103 

practice, our conscious states must be dealt with 
more concretely. The pleasurable or painful 
state must, for the purpose of choice, be taken as 
a whole, including function, feeling, and, we may 
add, the expression or consummation of the 
affective state, which, is in fact, but a single state 
however we may distinguish its phases or aspects. 
For us, in other words, "pleasures" differ in 
quality or kind. And even psychologists are to 
be found who take the same view. 1 

But the affectional state, even in its initial 
phase, may vary in intensity. One colour, or one 
shade of colour, may yield a stronger sense of satis- 
faction than another ; or a musician may feel that 
the pleasure which he derives from the harmonies 
of sound is more intense than that which he takes 
in the harmonies of colour. Such variations, 
involving a question of degree, are so far quanti- 
tative. And they are, in fact, such as we might 
expect from the nature of feeling as the exponent 
of a more or less diffusive reaction of the organism 
to the changing phases of its experience. The 
intimate nature of the reaction, as we have said, 

1 The variety of simple affective qualities seems to be 
indefinitely great. — W. Wundt: Outlines of Psychology, 2d 
Eng. ed., p. 90 (Judd's tr.). 

The countless feelings that thrill the human heart, envy, 
anger, ambition, love, etc., are obviously different in quality. 
It would be doing violence to the facts to force all these 
emotions into the two classes, feelings of pleasure and feelings 
of pain. — Th. Ziehn: Intr. to Phys. Psychology, -p. 178 (Van 
Liew and Beyer). 



104 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

has not been explored. But it appears, under 
inspection, to be a continuation of the initial 
impression, invading the organism in varying 
degrees of energy and completeness. The affec- 
tive reaction shows, accordingly, with reference 
to the nervous system at large, a certain volume 
and strength, which are reported in consciousness 
as the volume and strength of the feeling, and 
may be made the subject of comparative estimate. 
A sharp pinch of the ear, for example, has little 
more than local significance, while an incision 
made by a surgeon's knife may check respiration, or 
produce nervous shock, or so affect cerebral action 
as to suspend consciousness. In such reactions, 
considered in their merely physical aspect, there 
is a marked difference of intensity and scope ; and 
if feeling may be defined as the sense of such 
physical reactions, 1 the energy and extent of 
the reaction may well be represented by what 
we call the intensity and breadth of the feeling. 
That is, feeling, even in its initial phase, may show 
quantitative as well as qualitative differences. 

And the quantitative differences are still more 
apparent in the later phases of feeling. The 
feeling of first contact or intention tends in its 
development to merge in the consciousness of 

1 My theory ... is that the bodily changes follow directly 
the perception of the exciting fact, and that our feeling 
of the same changes as they occur is the emotion. — W. 
James: Prin. of Psych., vol. ii., p. 449. 



Comparison of " Pleasures" 105 

the motor resultant. We impute then to the 
feeling something of the scope and energy of the 
act. The vigour with which one springs from a 
rattlesnake's coil seems to increase one's terror 
of its fangs. The strain of the struggle for a 
coveted prize intensifies the feeling with which 
one advances or falls behind in the struggle. There 
may be something of illusion here. We may 
impute to one process the energy of another 
which should be distinguished from it. But the 
relation between feeling and the action to which 
it prompts is in any case extremely close. 1 It has 
even been maintained that the sensory impression 
itself depends for its worth and vividness upon the 
scope and energy of the discharge or motor re- 
sponse. 2 And feeling, it should seem, as connect- 

1 Wollen wir naher beschreiben, was wir denn bei Lust und 
Unlust in unsempfinden, so wissenwir dies nicht anschaulicher 
zu thun, als indem wir die Lust als ein Streben nach dem 
Gegenstande hin, die Unlust als ein Widerstreben gegen 
denselben bezeichnen. Nur darum aber fliessen in unserer 
Schilderung die Namen der Gefiihle, der Triebe und 
Willensbestimmungen fortwahrend in einander, weil diese 
Zustande in der Wirklichkeit immer verbunden sind und 
durch die psychologische Abstraction nur insofern getrennt 
werden konnen, als die Apperception gegenuber den aus- 
seren Eindriicken bald ein passives bald ein actives Verhalten 
darbietet: im ersten Fall reden wir dann vorzugsweise von 
Gefuhl, im zweiten von Trieb, Begehren oder Wollen. — W. 
Wundt: Grundz. der Phys. Psychologie, vol. i, p. 535 (1887). 

2 Jedes Element des Bewusstseinsinhaltes dem Ubergang 
von Erregung zu Entladung im Rindengebiet zugeordnet 
ist und zwar derart, dass die Oualitat der Empfindung von 
der raumlichen Lage der Erregungsbahn, die Intensitat der 



106 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

ing the limiting aspects, sensation and conation, 
of a given conscious event, must be intimately 
related to both, sharing the quality of the sen- 
sation, peripheral or central, on the one hand, and 
something which represents the energy of the 
reaction on the other. And if this view is per- 
missible, if sensation, feeling, and impulsion are 
but various aspects of one indivisible event, no 
aspect of which is what it is without implication 
of the others, we cannot but conclude that differ- 
ences in feeling are susceptible of both qualitative 
and quantitative expression. Pleasures may dif- 
fer, at least for the purposes of practical choice, 
both in degree and in kind. 1 

But while pleasures differ in degree, as all will 
allow, it does not follow that they may be sub- 
jected to precise mathematical treatment. For 
a given individual the strength of a feeling may 
be roughly gauged perhaps by the strength of its 
motor expression, but there is no affectional unit 
which can be generally applied even to the feelings 
of the same individual. And in practice there need 
not be. At least we make shift to do without it. 
We are content if differences in quantity or 
quality, or in both, enable us to establish some- 

Empfindung von der Starke der Erregung, die Wertnuance 
der Empfindung von der raumlichen Lage der Entladungs- 
bahn und die Lebhaftigkeit der Empfindung von der Starke 
der Entladung abhangt. — H. Munsterberg: Grundz. der 
Psychologie, vol. i., p. 548-9. 

1 J. S. Mill: Utilitarianism, chap. ii. 



Comparison of " Pleasures" 107 

thing like an order of preference. This is per- 
haps all we ever attempt to do, and even this is 
not always possible. And much has been made of 
this difficulty. It perplexes us indeed at every 
turn of life. But the differences on which our 
common ethical distinctions are founded are 
for the most part too palpable to be missed. Man's 
moral struggle is a struggle to escape ruinous and 
imminent disaster rather than an effort to follow 
subtle distinctions where only refined observation 
can detect a difference. The difficulty of apply- 
ing to our conduct an order of preference based 
on affectional differences is therefore by no means 
fatal. A greater difficulty, if we give due regard 
to the functional origin of feeling, is to find any 
other basis. 



CHAPTER X 

THE GENERAL OR RATIONALISED VOLITIONAL END 

WHAT we regard as the general volitional 
end is now perhaps clear. It may be 
summarised as the reduction of the several con- 
scious activities to a rational and organised 
unity based on the principle of conscious choice. 

This principle, as we have seen, prompts us in 
any given case to seek the fullest satisfaction 
for the volitional impulse. But our impulses 
conflict and cannot all be gratified. And even 
were there no internal conflict the conditions of 
life would compel us to forego much that we might 
be impelled to seek. Hence in order to become 
a rational principle, the principle of choice must 
be construed with reference to the conscious life 
and its environment as a whole. In other words, 
it must be applied in the direction of our energies 
to such particular ends as offer on the whole, 
in the character and completeness of our functional 
activity, the completest satisfaction of our voli- 
tional demands which the conditions of life allow. 

Such a statement of the supreme volitional 
end is of course merely formal in its terms. The 

108 



The General Volitional End 109 

content must be filled in from experience, general 
and individual, of the forms of activity which 
satisfy. And we cannot, from the nature of the 
case, conceive of this end as involving any attain- 
ment or possession which may be regarded as the 
final consummation of our ends. The volitional 
life is an organising process to which we can assign 
no fixed closure until death arrests the process. 
The end is progressive. In fact, in denning the 
end of the conscious life we have done no more than 
define the direction of its activities or the true law 
of its development. 

And this law may properly be called a natural 
law. It is not indeed, like the laws of which we 
speak in the sciences of observation, a generalised 
statement of what actually happens. It is a 
norm or a merely directive law. But it is founded 
upon a basic fact of our nature, upon the fact, 
namely, that each impulsion, so far as it is free 
from interference by a rival, seeks full satisfaction. 
It is therefore implicate in the nature of the 
conscious life. And it would be the actual law 
if the conscious organism as a whole were com- 
pletely organised in accordance with the principle 
which governs each impulsion as it severally 
takes control of the field of choice. In other 
words, it looks to the completest satisfaction of 
our nature conceived as a composite tendency 
in which each constituent has its recognised place. 
It is natural therefore in the pregnant sense that 



no Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

it applies to the whole rather than to any mere 
part of our nature. Through it our whole nature 
tends to arrive at completest expression. 

And while the law is natural in this broad sense 
we are justified in calling it the rational law. It 
is a generalised and rationalised statement of the 
principle which we all inconsequently and irra- 
tionally recognise in practice. We have no hesi- 
tation in calling the effort to seek the fullest 
satisfaction a rational effort where there is but 
a single impulse to gratify. A thirsty man, for 
instance, having nothing but his thirst to con- 
sider, would hardly escape question of his sanity 
if, with abundance of sweet water at hand, he 
should refuse to slake his thirst. He might, of 
course, have other things to consider. He might 
fear the effect of a too copious draught on an 
overheated system; or he might through his 
generous instincts be moved, like Sir Philip Sidney, 
by a fellow-man's greater necessity. What had 
been a simple situation would then become com- 
plex. But what new principle could we apply to 
the more complex situation? Taking human 
nature as a whole, and having regard no less to 
its beneficent or social element than to its so-called 
self-regarding aspect, we find no other principle 
which commends itself to a reasonable man than 
that which enjoins such direction of his activities 
as shall procure for him the completest satis- 
faction on the whole. 



The General Volitional End hi 

And this rational law, as controlling all the 
impulsions of our nature in the same general 
sense, is a harmonising law. Harmony, we have 
seen, is referable ultimately to some subjective 
test. Sounds, for instance, are most harmonious 
whose concord, as measured by this test, is sweetest 
or most pleasurable. Such a test for conscious 
experience generally we find in the general sensi- 
bility to pleasure and pain, taking these terms 
in their broadest intention. And by means of the 
law rationalised from the results of this test, we 
are enabled not only to modulate discordant 
tendencies, but to impart the greatest value, or, in 
other words, the richest harmony, to the general 
conscious content of life. 

And, finally, this natural, rationalised, and 
harmonising law may be regarded as the true 
law of self-realisation or self-development. The 
self is, as a matter of fact, developed in many 
types, and as there are many existing types 
so there are many ideals of the self. It would 
seem, however, that these ideals cannot have 
all the same value. The self as conceived by 
the barbarian or the voluptuary or the practical 
materialist is a gross and shrunken ideal as com- 
pared with the self conceived in the full breadth 
of its capacity for life. And this broader self, if 
what we have urged is true, must be recognised 
as incomparably the more satisfactory self. It 
is the self, therefore, which, as rational beings 



ii2 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

seeking the fullest satisfaction, we should endea- 
vour to realise ; and the form of that more generous 
self must be determined ultimately, as we contend, 
through a consistent and intelligent application 
of the principle of conscious choice here enun- 
ciated. In this principle, accordingly, we find 
the principle which the theory of self-development 
requires to determine that form of the self which 
shall insure the completest self-expression. 

To recapitulate, then, we find that the true law 
of self-development is identical with the law which 
guides us, through functional activity, to the 
completest satisfaction attainable in life as a 
whole. And this law is implicate in each conscious 
impulsion: each appetition demands full satis- 
faction. Here lies the natural basis of the law. 
But the conscious life is as yet ill organised. 
Our aims are conflicting, our acts inconsequent, 
and the discord which thus marks our functional 
life is reflected in the distractions and general 
low value of our feeling or our affectional life. 
Hence the problem of conduct is the problem 
of rationalising, harmonising, and completing our 
lives by so controlling our choice of ends that the 
principle recognised in the case of the particular 
appetition shall be applied to the conduct as 
a whole. 

The consistent application of this principle, 
however, which in the mere statement seems so 
simple, is a task which our actual human nature 



The General Volitional End 113 

finds extremely difficult. This difficulty springs, 
we may say, from two main causes : the strength of 
the instinctive and subconscious bias, which 
overrides the broader and saner intention ; and 
the restriction of the view in volition to a part 
only of the field of conscious choice. The former 
of these causes is often reducible to a case of 
the latter. Anger, lust, and fear, for instance, 
are in their intensity blind to everything but the 
objects of their own suggestion, and the broader 
human interest, the interest of the humanised 
self in beneficent and fruitful association with 
sympathetic minds, is thus shut out from 
recognition. 

The field of view is limited also by our incapacity, 
even when we are unbiassed, to see far forward 
into the effect of our acts. None of us are, of 
course, exempt from this sort of restriction. Hu- 
man affairs are highly complex. The conse- 
quences of what seems to be a trivial act may 
be so wide and far-reaching as to baffle our intelli- 
gence in the attempt to compute them. While 
therefore we may have no doubt as to the sort 
of actions enjoined on us by the principles we 
cherish, we have the most perplexing doubts as to 
the bearing and objective character of a particular 
act. For this reason, as well as for the reason that 
it is impossible to follow out in detail the whole 
of man's conduct, educational effort and the 
force of opinion are directed to the intent rather 
s 



ii4 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

than to the form of the act, to the general dis- 
position of the will rather than to the particular 
determinations of the will. In the midst of the 
confusing problems of conduct we feel that the 
best guarantee of a just solution is the persistent 
desire to be just. 

And here as elsewhere experience brings its 
lessons. A certain practical knowledge is acquired 
from day to day as we live and choose and act, 
and this knowledge, though unsystematised or 
unscientific in form, is of great value in the con- 
duct of life. And much may be learned in a 
lifetime. But the individual does not begin with 
a blank sheet or depend on his own experience 
alone : he has the tradition of the race behind him. 
And as every disciplined mind starts with this 
tradition, and tends through its influence to 
correct or modify or enlarge the tradition, man's 
stock of wisdom is cumulative. We may hope 
that the world as it grows older will grow a little 
wiser. 

And with the increase of wisdom we may hope, 
too, for increase of happiness. Happiness as a 
product of activities not exhausted in the amassing 
of "means," but effectively directed to the ac- 
complishment of valid and ultimate ends, is as 
yet rare. We are for the most part engaged in the 
pursuit of provisional aims: our energy is ex- 
pended in merely averting calamity, or in the 
animal occupation of saving ourselves alive. 



The General Volitional End 1 1 5 

Pain is our familiar prompter, and the dread of 
disaster casts a shadow on our sunniest hours. 
Hence the pity or contempt with which sage 
experience smiles at youth's dream of happiness, 
and a theory which in any sense relates the 
conduct of life to the pursuit of happiness seems, 
like the hope on which it is founded, to be an 
illusion. So our mentors are wont to insist. 
But the relative prevalence of pain, if proven, does 
not affect our theory. The principle of conscious 
choice remains the same whatever our position 
as between the poles of choice, whether we are 
engaged in the search for pleasure or mainly 
employed in the effort to avoid or mollify pain. 
And the law of life generalised from this principle 
remains the same. It determines only the direc- 
tion of our efforts and requires no more of us than 
to make the best of such conditions as we find. 
Whether we lie under the frown of a sullen fate 
or bask in fortune's smile, melioration is its 
watchword : to mitigate evil, for evil to substitute 
good, for good to find a better good. But the 
good is relative always to some functional demand, 
and is good because it satisfies this demand. 



SECTION IV 
The Associative Life and the Moral End 
CHAPTER XI 

SOCIAL UNION NECESSARY TO HUMAN DEVELOPMENT 

IN the discussion so far we have treated our 
subject generally, taking human nature as we 
find it, and giving little attention to the conditions 
of its development. There is one main condition, 
however, which should be explicitly recognised as 
a condition which the ethical student cannot 
possibly ignore : the medium in which the individ- 
ual lives and moves. Human personality is not 
an isolated growth, and neither human development 
nor the norm of human conduct were intelligible 
without recognition of the effect on the individual 
of communion with beings like himself. This 
social influence we have assumed. The man we 
have all along had in mind is man as an element 
of human society, but we have made no special 
study of the nature of the relation which the social 
individual holds to the social union. This relation 
we have now to consider. 

116 



Necessity of Social Union 1 1 7 

We pause, however, before carrying our inquiry 
forward, to review certain conclusions that we 
have reached. 

An organism, we found, is the seat of many 
activities converging to a common end. This end 
is, primarily, the conservation of the individual 
in the discharge of its functions. Among the 
latter is included the function of propagating the 
kind ; and the discharge of this function operates 
to give the primary tendency, self -conservation, 
a remoter and broader aim, namely, the con- 
servation of the species. But the conditions of 
life press so hard on the individuals of the species 
that not all are able to resist the pressure. Only 
the fittest survive ; that is, such individuals alone 
as are most completely equipped for the struggle 
for existence maintain their existence. 

The appearance of consciousness in this com- 
petitive struggle marks a new era in the develop- 
ment of the vital series. It is regarded, in fact, as 
introducing a new series, that of animal life. At 
any rate, dating from the appearance of con- 
sciousness, the activities of the individual begin 
to be directed to new ends, giving a new impulse to 
the development of the organism and the series. 
How these ends are gradually distinguished and 
emphasised we need not restate. Suffice it to 
say that a great part of man's conscious activity is 
directed to ends which have no immediate reference 
to his physical well-being at all. And the number 



n8 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

and scope of such ends increase as the conscious 
life develops, until at length the body is regarded 
as the mere instrument of the conscious functions 
rather than as the reason for their being. 

There is, however, an element of the conscious 
life — and from this point we proceed with our 
inquiry — which marks by its appearance the 
beginning of still another series in the line of 
organic succession. This is the element of social 
feeling, or, objectively, the principle of association, 
through which this feeling finds expression. As 
the vital series would have been arrested, but 
for consciousness, at the vegetal stage, so the 
psychic division of the series would have been 
arrested, but for the principle of association, at the 
brutish stage. Man owes to this principle, if not his 
very existence as man, all that is characteristic of 
civilised man. 1 From the moment of its appearance 
it gave a new impulse to his development, broad- 
ened the sphere of his action, and began to work a 
change in his character. It was virtually a new 
principle for the organisation of his powers, and no 
man can set limits to the efficacy of this principle. 

In the associative life the conscious individual, 
the knowing and feeling subject pursuing his 
ends, is still the ultimate conscious unit. 2 The 

1 Pour l'homme lui-meme, le premier terme de la se"rie de 
ses succes n'est autre que sa sociability. — Fr£d£ric Houssay: 
Revue Philosophique , May, 1893, p. 475. 

2 There is no social brain other than and separate from the 



Necessity of Social Union 119 

principle of conscious choice remains therefore 
valid. But the sphere of the individual's interests 
is expanded. The conscious subject tends, in 
proportion to the strength of his social feeling, 
his intelligence, and his experience of the associa- 
tive life, to increase in capacity to grasp with 
vividness and detail the ends of his fellow-men, 
and thus to make other men's ends his own. An 
end does not engage the interest of the social 
subject merely as it inures to his personal ad- 
vantage. It may become in a sense impersonal. 
An idea cannot, of course, become wholly detached, 
floating as it were in vacuo, but it may be con- 
ceived universally, that is, as independent of the 
fortunes of the thinking subject or of any particular 
man. A certain personal interest, however, in 
the universalised idea still remains: the subject 
takes personal satisfaction in its realisation. 
Truth, Liberty, Humanity, for example, are uni- 
versal ideas the progressive realisation of which 
the individual may make his personal concern. 
And his interest may be so profound, his nature 
may find in their pursuit satisfaction so complete, 

brain of individuals. — B. Bosanquet: Intern. Journal of 
Ethics, April, 1894. 

Society is not an organism with a single centre of conscious- 
ness. . . .But the name marks the essential fact, that 
although at any time the properties of the constituted whole 
are the product of the constituting units, those units have 
gained their properties in virtue of belonging to this whole. — 
Leslie Stephen: Science of Ethics, pp. in, 112. 



120 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

that for their sake he is willing to sacrifice his 
private ends and even his life. 

Opportunity for the expansion of individual 
aims, however, and for the inner development 
which such expansion implies, would be wanting 
were there not in the associative life some miti- 
gation of the severity of the struggle for existence. 
And some mitigation of this severity is implied 
in the very being of society. So far as men unite 
for any purpose they cease to contend. And such 
moderation or suspension of the struggle as the fact 
of society implies limits the application of the law 
of the survival of the fittest, 1 if by the fittest we 
mean those who are best equipped for the struggle. 
Survival of the fittest, as usually interpreted, pre- 
supposes continuous conflict. It is the effect of 

> There is another fallacy which appears to me to pervade 
the so-called "ethics of evolution." It is the notion that 
because, on the whole, animals and plants have advanced 
in perfection of organisation by means of the struggle for 
existence and the consequent "survival of the fittest," 
therefore men in society, men as ethical beings, must look 
to the same process to help them towards perfection. — T. H. 
Huxley: Evolution and Ethics, p. 80. (Appleton, N. Y., 1894.) 

A la lutte pour l'existence on a oppose avec raison l'asso- 
ciation pour la vie ... la grande loi a laquelle tout nous 
ramene. — F. Paulhan: Rev. Philos., April, 1894, p. 403. 

As to the value of the qualities by which the type is pre- 
served, natural selection exhibits a fine indifference. . . . The 
lower type underbids the higher. . . . The low, miserable, 
degraded bacillus wages war with him [man] on equal terms, 
and in some places may be almost said to conquer and expel 
him. — L. T. Hobhouse: Intern. Jour, of Ethics, January, 189S. 



Necessity of Social Union 121 

fierce and uninterrupted competition for means of 
subsistence of which there is but a limited supply. 
But social feeling tends to harmonise or to identify 
ends which in its absence would conflict, and in 
the associative life competition is replaced, so 
far as the principle of association prevails, by 
co-operation. Room is thus provided for freer 
play of the conscious activities. Energy which 
was expended in securing a footing upon which 
to maintain the struggle for physical life is now 
liberated for the pursuit and achievement of the 
broader ends of the conscious life. The circle 
of life's aims and interests thus expands. And 
with this expansion goes increase of capacity to 
use and devise new instruments for the accom- 
plishment of these aims. Human nature develops. x 
The law of the survival of the fittest, on the other 
hand, is the law of man merely in his capacity 
of brute. As a biological law, moreover, it is a 
mere generalisation of fact. It simply describes 
a situation prevalent in the animal world. We 
seek a law of a different kind, a law, or norm, 
which shall enable us to satisfy most completely 
the demands of our nature. And the fact that 
brute nature, red in tooth and claw, has fought 

1 La civilisation met en valeur nos aptitudes; elle leur 
permet de naitre en m6me temps q'elle cree les besoins aux- 
quels elles re"pondront. Les causes comme les fins de nos 
faculte's sont essentiellement sociales. — Gustave Belot: 
Rev. Philos., February, 1892, p. 218. 



122 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

its way up through the vital scale by no means 
justifies the presumption that human nature, 
which is essentially social, can find its com- 
pletest fulfilment through the adoption of the 
anti-social habit of the brute. So far as this 
habit survives, in fact, it tends to defeat any hope 
of such fulfilment. For man the promise of the 
future lies in what may be accomplished only 
through the co-operative activity of the social 
life. 

It may be urged that any hope of suppressing 
the competitive habit is baseless, and by directing 
human effort to an illusory end can only do harm ; 
that the struggle for existence is as continuous, 
as relentless, among men as among the fiercest of 
brutes ; that it has merely changed its form from a 
physical struggle to a contest of wits. The strug- 
gle indeed continues. As to that there cannot 
be the slightest doubt. And yet if there exists 
among men any genuine social feeling, if there 
is any community of interests recognised at all, 
we must admit that the struggle is so far abated. 
And the fact of social feeling is indisputable. 
The sphere of its influence may be narrow, much 
profession of such feeling may be hollow, and we 
may deceive even ourselves in the disavowal of 
private motives when we are engaged in the 
pursuit of ends ostensibly common. But the 
feeling exists, and exists in undeniable strength. 
And the effect of its presence is to suspend, so 



Necessity of Social Union 123 

far as it goes, the anti-social conflict, and to 
introduce a new order of relations in which the 
formula "the survival of the fittest" must be 
abandoned or interpreted in a more human sense. 
The substitution of this new order for the old 
is the ethical aim. Our thesis is, in fact, that 
ethical law is fundamental social law, or a sum- 
mary of certain elemental conditions with which 
the social unit must comply that he may be fitted 
to play his part in the associative life. 1 And 
it will help us to understand these conditions 
if we consider, briefly, the nature of social feeling 
and the process by which social union is established. 

1 Toutes les vertus sont des conditions determiners de 
la pleine vie sociale, comme de la pleine vie personelle, par 
cela raeme d'une vie universelle et ide'ale. — A. Fouill^e: La 
France au Point de Vue Morale, p. 233. 

La moralite, en un mot, est la r^sultante de notre activity, 
de notre vie sociale, collective, comme la mentality est la 
resultante de notre activity sensible, sensorielle, psychique. 
— Julien Pioger; Revue Philos., June, 1894, p. 637. 

By saying that a law is moral, we mean that it belongs to 
human beings as such, and not as belonging to any special 
class. This, in my view, amounts to saying that the moral 
law defines a property of the social tissue. — Leslie Stephen: 
Science of Ethics, pp. 167-8. 

That which constitutes the measure of morality seems to be 
the actual . . . surrender of the will to the greater will 
of the system to which we belong. We cannot judge by the 
feeling of being good or bad; that is absolutely deceptive. 
— B. Bosanquet: Psych, of the Moral Self, p. 113. (London, 
1897O 



CHAPTER XII 

INDEPENDENT ORIGIN OF THE SOCIAL INSTINCTS 

1 A TE have referred to the associative life as the 
» * product of social feeling, and have as- 
sumed that this feeling is an essential element of 
our nature. Look backward as far as we may 
we find man associating with man. He appears 
at the dawn of history, and even in the barbarism 
which makes no written record, as living in social 
groups and seeking for the rude motions of his 
life a sympathetic response in the lives of his 
fellow-men. 

But the social life yields more to the individual 
than this sympathetic response. It renders him 
service. He finds even in the horde, or whatever 
may be deemed the elementary social group, 
companions in the chase and comrades in attack 
and defence, that is to say, protection for his life 
and ampler means of sustaining life. So obvious 
indeed are the benefits of the social state that 
social feeling has been defined as little more 
than the sense of these benefits. Man loves his 
fellow-man, it is said, as he loves his axe or his 
spear, for the use he can make of him; and his 

124 



Origin of Social Instincts 125 

interest in his fellow-men exceeds his interest 
in these things solely for the reason that 
he finds no other instrument comparable with 
man in the accomplishment of his private ends. 
But the reduction of all interests to an egoistic 
interest has never been completely worked out. 
And there is a better explanation, as we shall 
endeavour to show, of the chemistry or ultimate 
constitution of social feeling than that which 
traces it to a sense of personal advantage. 

Nor can the social instinct be treated as a mere 
amplification, through the association of ideas, of 
either the sexual or the parental instinct. The 
sexual instinct, as such, is perhaps as purely 
egoistic as any animal propensity whatever. So 
far as the parental instinct, on the other hand, 
has a social value, it appears, at least in its 
paternal aspect, to need as much support from 
mental association as the social instinct itself; 
and if in its maternal aspect it must be regarded 
as an original instinct, its social efficacy, or the 
conscious identification of interests which it 
implies, seems to be limited to the scope of the 
physical relation. The mother, as such, loves only 
her own child. Granted an active sympathy, 
independent of that which is bound up with the 
instinct itself, a woman's heart may respond to 
the appeal which she reads in the face of any 
child. But there appears to be nothing in 
maternal feeling, where the broader sympathy is 



126 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

wanting, to convert it into a general social 
feeling. 

And on the whole no explanation of the sym- 
pathetic or social impulse which reduces it to a 
mere by-product, in accordance with the laws of 
association, of impulses more elementary than 
itself appears to be satisfactory. Social feeling 
is of course affected by the association of ideas, 
the principle of association being general in its 
operation. But even though social feeling should 
be shown to be of later origin than certain other 
forms of feeling, there seem to be good grounds 
for regarding it as of independent origin, appear- 
ing as inevitably as egoistic feeling when in the 
development of the psycho-physical system the 
necessary cognitive or ideational basis is supplied. 

Feeling, as we have seen, is the inner or sub- 
jective aspect of a psychic process which in its 
outward and cognitive reference is classed as a 
percept or an idea. My perceptions are of course 
my own. I may perceive the same object as 
another, but I cannot perceive it through the 
impressions of another: the sensory data must 
be mine. But it is otherwise with an idea. I 
may by suggestion adopt the idea of another. 
That is to say, I may infer from a certain facial 
expression, or from certain gestures, sounds, or 
symbols, what is in the mind of another, and the 
idea thus suggested becomes my idea. And this 
idea, being now my own, will, if not inhibited, 



Origin of Social Instincts 127 
« 

tend through my own motor system to act itself 
out. It is its very nature to seek expression. 
To a certain extent, also, it will have the same 
emotional tone as in the mind of the original 
owner. In fact, we may say generally, in view of 
the common basis of our nature, that like ideational 
processes tend to produce in different minds like 
affectional results: allowing for individual differ- 
ences, men who are possessed of the same idea 
feel in the same way and give like expression to 
their feelings. It is true that these differences 
may be great. But they are due, at least in part, 
to a difference in power to interpret the symbols 
of an idea. Susceptibility to suggestion presup- 
poses a certain refinement of sensibility and a 
certain grade of intelligence, and in these respects 
men are by no means alike. But when the cog- 
nitive and imaginative powers of a man are so far 
developed that he can form a just idea of the 
mental experience of another, or respond to sug- 
gestion, the suggested idea, taken by itself, will 
tend to express itself in the same way, approxi- 
mately, as if the experience were his own. And 
the accompanying feeling will be the same in 
kind, with personal modification of course, as 
if he had gone through the same experience. 
So we feel another's pain, share his sorrows 
and his joys, and keep pace with his thoughts. 

Ordinarily, however, the feeling which arises 
upon mere suggestion will not have the same 



128 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

strength as that which is evoked by personal 
experience. The suggested idea loses some- 
thing of its vividness in passing by suggestion 
from mind to mind, and therewith something 
of its affective power. The suggested idea is 
further modified by the fact that the dominant 
aims and inhibitory tendencies which in any 
given case may check the course of an idea in its 
emotional expression, or in its advance to its 
object, are in no two individuals the same. Thus 
the identification of the suggested with the original 
idea is never perfect. The suggested idea may 
even be cast out as repugnant to or incompatible 
with the ideas of the receiving mind. But so 
far as the idea is effectively grasped, and resists 
the personal influences which tend to change 
its character or diminish its strength, its effect 
on the feeling is the same in kind when its source 
is in the experience of another as when the ex- 
perience is one's own. The sympathetic interest 
is, so far, as inevitable as the personal interest. 

Ideas thus acquire their prevalence over many 
minds. Means of communication are of course 
presupposed wherever there is such sympathetic 
ideation with its attendant feeling. Ideas are 
not objects presented to sensuous or to a so-called 
noetic perception, or passing bodily from brain 
to brain. They are processes made intelligible 
by symbol. We read another's mind in his ex- 
pression, his attitude, his gestures, his acts; and 



Origin of Social Instincts 129 

we employ the artificial symbolism of speech for 
the expression of ideas that cannot be conveyed by 
the natural symbol. But our skill in the use and 
interpretation of our symbols, natural and conven- 
tional, varies. It increases, however, with in- 
crease in the refinement, resources, and general 
activity of the mind, and also, we may add, with 
increase in emotional power, the capacity for 
feeling being closely related to the capacity to 
entertain such ideas as evoke the feeling. The 
communication made possible by symbols becomes 
at length, between natures finest in texture 
and richest in resource, so swift and intimate that 
thought answers thought and feeling responds to 
feeling as if by direct contact. The sympathy 
may then be said to be complete. 

Social or sympathetic feeling has thus an original 
basis in the form of our consciousness, and stands 
in no need of derivation from special instincts. 
We share the feelings of others so far as we share 
in idea their experience or their desires, and find 
in ourselves no countervailing impulsion to thwart 
the suggested idea in its natural course to fruition 
in feeling and action. And so we may explain 
the really social elements of conjugal, parental, 
tribal, or national feeling. The more closely 
we are associated the more readily we understand 
one another, and the special character of the 
association gives a special character to the con- 
sentient feeling. In maternal feeling the sym- 



130 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

pathy is perhaps most complete, and there the 
identification of experience through the suggested 
idea is most complete. The mother knows every 
movement of the child, forestalls every need, 
and absorbs, as it were, the very consciousness of 
the child. And the feeling born of this intimate 
knowledge grows by what it feeds on. Her love 
creates opportunities for love. 

And we may say, speaking generally, that the 
human consciousness is now so far developed that 
the capacity and the craving for sympathy are 
among its essential elements. In this capacity 
and craving we have the subjective grounds of the 
social life. Sympathy can be complete only as 
between kindred minds, and human nature, 
which is fundamentally everywhere the same, 
is completely reflected only in human nature. 
Hence the pressure of the demand for human com- 
panionship. We are constitutionally social. 1 The 
social impulse, it is true, is traversed and ob- 
scured by egoistic demands, and is rarely seen in 
purity and completeness; but so far as we are 
social we seek human companionship for com- 
panionship's sake, irrespective of its "utility" 
or egoistic advantage. A man craves com- 

1 Nor will any one deny that this affection of a creature 
towards the good of the species or common nature is as 
proper and natural to him as it is to any organ, part, or 
member of an animal body, or mere vegetable, to work in its 
known course and regular way of growth. — Shaftesbury: 
Inquiry concerning Virtue or Merit, book ii., part i, sec. i. 



Origin of Social Instincts 131 

panionship even when he eats, and the loftiest 
creations of the intellect bespeak the appreciative 
response of kindred minds. The social instinct, 
in short, pervades all our instincts. The self 
cut off from sympathy is an atrophied self, and 
in the midst of egoistic gratification wearies of 
life. 

Seeing then that the self in the human type 
is the seat of a pervading social impulse, self- 
development is necessarily incomplete so long 
as the opportunity for social life is incomplete. 
A social nature can thrive only in a social medium. 
Hence the social impulse alone, impure as it 
is, were ground enough for the institution of 
society. We must live with mankind about 
us. We must breathe an atmosphere charged 
with human ideas and human feeling for the 
reason alone that our feeling and ideas are human. 

But not only is the associative life a necessity 
of our social nature; it is no less indispensable 
as a means of broadening man's intelligence and 
developing his general conscious life. Without 
society, as we have said, there had been nothing 
of what we call progress. Art, science, literature, 
civilisation depend upon conditions which can be 
realised only in the social state, and especially 
upon that continuity of effort and cumulation 
of benefit which the social tradition makes 
possible. 1 Through this tradition the race holds 

» The content of the intellectual and social environment is 



i3 2 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

what it has won, and as it is constantly adding 
to its knowledge and the instruments of its 
power the gap between man and the lower animate 
world is constantly widened. And what humanity 
yet may be and do we cannot know. But vast 
as are the possibilities of human capacity and 
effort, they are all contingent upon the inter- 
change of ideas and the association of effort which 
are characteristic of the social life. Man in isola- 
tion were merely the most cunning of brutes, 
and his life "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and 
short." » 

Thus every human interest demands for its due 
recognition a life of common helpfulness and 
associated action. Social union is the condition 
at once of collective achievement and of individual 
growth, and marks, as we have said, the beginning 
of a new period in human development. But 
what constitutes a union social? The social 
impulse is undeniably present, and men do in 
fact band together; and yet their association 
is far from being one of common service and 
harmonious effort. How is it that among beings 
constitutionally social we find constant irritation 
and opposition, and too often murderous con- 
flict? Apparently men have not yet mastered, 

kept constant by the handing down of tradition through 
social heredity. — J. Mark Baldwin: On Selective Thinking; 
Psychological Review, January, 1898. 
1 Hobbes: Leviathan, part 1, chap. xiii. 



Origin of Social Instincts 133 

or they fail to apply, the principles which control 
the organisation of a true social union. We 
may properly attempt, then, some sort of state- 
ment of these principles. 



CHAPTER XIII 

PRINCIPLES OF THE SOCIAL UNION 

A TRUE social union will of course oppose no 
arbitrary impediment to the suggestions of 
social feeling. In it the identity of human 
nature, which is the ground of human fellow- 
feeling, will receive the fullest practical recogni- 
tion compatible with the aims of associative 
action. The union is in principle a sympathetic 
union. 1 

Of course no man's attitude can be in all respects 
equally sympathetic towards all mankind. The 
fullest sympathy is impossible, as we have seen, 

1 And is not that the best ordered State . . . which most 
nearly approaches to the condition of the individual — as 
in the body, when but a finger is hurt, the whole frame, 
drawn towards the soul and forming one realm under the 
ruling power therein, feels the hurt, and sympathises all 
together with the part affected, and then we say that the man 
has a pain in his finger ? — Plato: Republic, 462, CD. (Jowett's 
tr.). 

But it should be borne in mind that, however great weight 
we may attribute to public opinion, our regard for the 
approbation and disapprobation of our fellows depends on 
sympathy, which, as we shall see, forms an essential part 
of the social instinct, and is indeed its foundation stone. 
— Darwin: Descent of Man, chap. iv. 

134 



Principles of the Social Union 135 

without intimate companionship and knowledge. 
The influence of the social spirit is most effective 
therefore among those who are most closely re- 
lated , not necessarily by local bonds or the ties of 
kindred, but through community of ideas; and it 
diminishes as such community of ideas is ob- 
structed by distance, by difference in language, 
by incompatibilities of temper and training, or by 
any cause which keeps the spheres of conscious ac- 
tivity apart. While all men, accordingly, may 
have a certain claim upon our sympathy in 
virtue of their humanity, the laws of feeling 
make it impossible that the same measure of 
sympathy should be accorded to all. No man 
can be to all men what he is to the few whom 
he knows well. 

But while we must recognise perforce certain 
natural limitations to the expression of social 
feeling, a true society cannot, as the medium 
of the sympathetic life, restrict the range of our 
sympathies by barriers artificially interposed. 
Basing its union on the essential identity of our 
nature in spite of all difference it is bound in its 
own interest to emphasise the identity rather than 
the difference. The vital impulse can express 
itself only where it has way, and the broader 
the circle of our sympathies the broader the aims 
and active interests of our lives. Exclusion 
on the one hand is restriction on the other. The 
field of social activity and feeling should therefore 



136 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

be made as wide as the conditions of life will allow. 
Society, having its reason for being in the oppor- 
tunities it offers for enriching and expanding 
human life, contravenes its own principle when 
by arbitrary obstructions it dams up the stream 
of life. 

Not every community, therefore, which calls 
itself a society has full title to the name. The 
constitutional demand for sympathy is of course 
to some extent satisfied wherever men are found 
living in communion. But society parts itself 
off into classes by lines impervious to social feeling. 
In some communities there is a class which is 
practically shut out of the social league, and every- 
where we find that arrogant self-assertion, that 
arbitrary affirmation of will against will, which is 
the negation of social feeling. It were impossible, 
in fact, to point to any community where there 
is no wanton exercise of power, ranging from 
the assumption of petty social privilege to the 
assertion, in fact or in effect, of ownership in the 
person. And all arbitrary exercise of power, all 
effort to exploit a fellow-being and degrade him 
as a tool, is anti-social. 

But the conditions of social union are by no 
means fully complied with in the mere removal 
of barriers to the expression of social feeling. 
There is no sharpening of faculty, no increase 
of resources, no expansion of interests in the mere 
massing of individuals, like the huddling of sheep 



Principles of the Social Union 137 

or the herding of cattle. To reap the full benefit 
of the social state there must be association of 
effort with apportionment of tasks and diversity 
of function, or, to borrow the economist's phrase, 
division of labour. The social union must be an 
organised union. 

Such an organised union, confining the individ- 
ual, apparently, to a single monotonous task, 
might seem to involve loss of faculty and of that 
sense of amplitude of movement and freedom of 
choice which is the charm of a varied life. But 
social organisation, while it demands of the indi- 
vidual a certain special skill, extends at the same 
time the general field of opportunity and interest. 
So many things are possible to organised effort, 
and through the interlacing of social aims the 
individual takes part in enterprises so numerous 
and varied, that the life of the citizen in a de- 
veloped society is incomparably richer than the 
life of any tribesman, hermit, or hunter who 
seems to be sufficient to himself. Compare the 
activities of the "highly groomed" Goethe with 
those of the most versatile and self-reliant 
trapper. Beyond question organisation implies 
diversification no less than specialisation of 
function. 

And while multiplying the ends and interests 
of life, organisation furnishes ampler means for 
their pursuit. It brings within easy reach things 
which, without it, had never been dreamed of. 



138 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

And it not merely adds to the "goods" of life, 
and to the appliances by which man strengthens his 
feeble hands and sharpens eye and ear and 
every sense, but it apparently adds to man's native 
capacity for the general pursuits of life. Thus, 
while multiplying his ends, it in many ways in- 
creases his effectiveness in winning his ends. 1 

And this extension and diversification of 
employment, reacting on the feeling, enriches the 
distinctively social or sympathetic life. Social 
feeling does not exhibit itself apart or come un- 
bidden into being. It presupposes common ideas, 
common aims, a common experience. It springs 
up among neighbours who lend a hand when a 
neighbour needs it, among workmen who supple- 
ment each other's labours, among citizens asso- 
ciated in the pursuit of the same civic ideals or in 
defence of the same national life. Like all feeling 
it depends on function. It craves companion- 

1 John Stuart Mill: Prin. of Political Economy, book i., 
chap. viii. See also book iv., chap, i., sec. 2. 

Taking the human race as a whole, and not any one people, 
it appears that human development brings after it, in two 
ways, an ever-growing amelioration, first, in the radical con- 
dition of Man, which no one disputes; and next, in his cor- 
responding faculties, which is a view much less attended to. 
— Auguste Comte: Positive Philosophy, book vi., chap, iii., 
p. 467 (H. Martineau's tr.). 

Per contra Buckle: In the present state of our knowledge 
we cannot safely assume that there has been any permanent 
improvement in the moral and intellectual faculties of man. 
— History of Civilisation in England, vol. i.,p. 127. (Appleton, 
N. Y., 1883.) 



Principles of the Social Union 139 

ship, but the companionship which satisfies the 
social nature is not the mere presence of a fellow- 
being, but a comrade's fellowship in the action, 
suffering, pursuits, aspirations, and directive ideas 
of life. And the more varied and absorbing the 
common experience and aims, the more com- 
plete is the development of social feeling and the 
deeper the sense of social satisfaction. 

And as there are few activities of the ego that 
cannot be shared, the social or so-called altruistic 
life is not to be conceived as in necessary opposi- 
tion to the life of the ego. It appears from what 
we have learned of the genesis of social feeling 
that the ego socialised is simply the ego expanded. 
All experience has its characteristic affective tone. 
Bruises hurt us, warmth and sunlight please us; 
misfortune depresses and good fortune elates us. 
And when the feeling becomes social it is not by 
the substitution of a different feeling, but by the 
modulating effect of the reflection of our con- 
sciousness in another mind. The appearance 
of this reflection is felt as an enlargement of the 
ego, and is a source of pleasure, mingling with 
and modifying the original feeling, and disposing 
us to welcome the presence of the reflecting mind. 
And this pleasure is reciprocal. The reflection 
is itself reflected, and there is on both sides an 
expansion of the ego, and of the affectional life. 
Social feeling, in a word, is pain assuaged and 
pleasure increased through sympathetic enlarge- 



140 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

ment of the ideational and emotional field. 1 
No hard and fast line may be drawn, therefore, 
between the functions which we distinguish as 
egoistic on the one hand and as social on the 
other. The self is contemned as egoistic or 
"selfish" only in so far as the individual con- 
tracts his activities and interests to the sphere 
of a personality so narrow that he becomes 
uncompanionable. The self of absolute selfishness 
would, in fact, include little more than animal 
functions. But none of us are restricted to these 
poor limits. The self must be in some degree 
social, and the distinction between the egoistic 
and the altruistic, between the selfish and the 
social, is for human nature generally a question 
of refinement and breadth rather than a question 
of function. 

But enough has been said, perhaps, to enable 
us to determine the essential character of the 
social union. We conclude, gathering up the ends 
of our discussion : 

(I) That the social union must be, first of 
all, a sympathetic union. In so far as the union 
is unsympathetic, it negates its own principle. 

(II) That it must be, in the next place, a 
voluntary union. This is perhaps implied in the 
first condition. Sympathy attends only the 
spontaneous or independent movement of will 

1 Amor est laetitia concomitante idea causae externae. 
— Spinoza: Ethices, pars, iii., definitio vi., in fine. 



Principles of the Social Union 141 

accordant with will, and vanishes with the appear- 
ance of coercion. The union must be voluntary, 
moreover, to render associated effort most effective. 
An intractable, loath, or dissentient will is an 
element of weakness in any association, and is 
especially baneful where the ends aimed at require, 
as in social union, the continuous application of 
intelligent and reasoning minds. 

(III) That the social union must be an organ- 
ised union, each man having his due place and 
function in the common life, which demands 
service of all. Organisation is necessary to econo- 
mise effort and multiply results. But in achiev- 
ing the ends to which it is directly addressed, 
organisation indirectly develops man's capacity 
and enriches his feeling, and thus increases the 
general worth of life for the organising units. 

(IV) That, finally, the ends which the union is 
organised to pursue must be rational ends, and 
the method of organisation that which is most 
effective in achieving these ends. Rational ends, 
as we have seen, are such as are determined 
by a rational or consistent application of the 
principle of conscious choice, or such as tend 
in their achievement to give greatest affective 
value to the conscious life as a whole. Society 
exists, so far as it is in fact social, to aid in the 
pursuit of such ends: it has no other reason for 
being. Founded for any other purpose the union 
would be a merely arbitrary union. And the 



i4 2 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

amelioration of society depends upon the elimina- 
tion of its arbitrary elements and the progressive 
reduction of the union to conformity with its 
rational principle. 

Summarising these conditions or characteristics 
of the social union, we may define such a union as 
a voluntary co-operative organisation of inde- 
pendent but sympathetic minds, united in a com- 
mon effort to promote the rational ends of life, 
or ends generalised from the elementary principle 
which governs the particular choice. 

Such a union is of course a mere ideal. No 
actual society can be defined in these terms. 
But the will, like feeling, waits on the idea. Hu- 
manity is engaged in the institution of a true 
society and should have some idea of the main 
features of the society it would found. We have 
endeavoured to outline these features in accord- 
ance with some ultimate principle of our nature, 
and we have found that the same principle 
which makes social life a necessity, namely, the 
demand for such functional activity as will most 
satisfy, determines also the constitution of the 
ideal social union. The ideal may never become 
in all respects real. But it is an end towards 
which we may continually advance: it serves to 
set the direction of our effort. 



CHAPTER XIV 

MORALITY THE BASIS OF THE SOCIAL UNION 

TO socialise the will, or to prepare the minds 
of men for membership in the social union, 
is the essential problem of morals. There are, of 
course, other elemental problems which the social 
union has to consider. Questions arise touching 
the external form of the union and the administra- 
tion of its affairs as a commonwealth or polity, 
and every advanced community concerns itself 
with the general education of its members. But 
such matters lie outside of what is regarded as 
the strict province of morals. The function of 
morals, as a discipline, is to strengthen and refine 
social feeling and dispose the will to social con- 
duct; and ethics, or morals as a science, should 
furnish an adequate theory of the ground, object, 
and general method of such discipline. 

And the questions of morals are still burning 
questions because men have as yet so little social 
aptitude. We are too near the earlier stages of 
morality. The social impulse takes its primitive 
form among family and tribal relations, and 
is at first closely confined to the sphere of such 

143 



144 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

relations. 1 Whatever is outside of this sphere 
is beyond the pale of sympathy, and the individual, 
unable to grasp the idea of a general fraternal 
union, is insensible to the broader requirements 
of such union. His will, too, as yet but rudely 
socialised by the rough requirements of his 
barbarous entourage, is egoistic, impulsive, incon- 
stant, and violent. The will's need of discipline 
is as urgent as the mind's need of light. Such 
discipline practically involves, as we have said, the 
reorganisation of the will, and a task of such 
magnitude is but slowly accomplished. The 
habits of the will cannot suddenly be refined. 
Men live together. So far as we can learn, men 
always have lived together. But while men find it 
impossible to live in isolation, they find it also im- 
possible to grasp the full intent of the social impulse 
and to freely co-operate in the pursuit of those bene- 
ficent ends which include humanity in their scope. 
To make a beginning in the reformation of the 
will some restraint must be imposed on the 
arrogance of that blind self-assertion which is 
the antithesis of the social habit. This necessary 
discipline is in childhood enforced, with more 
or less judgment and firmness, by the parent. 

1 We have now seen that actions are regarded by savages, 
and were probably so regarded by primeval man, as good or 
bad, solely as they obviously affect the welfare of the tribe — 
not that of the species, nor that of an individual member of 
the tribe. — Darwin : Descent of Man, chap. iv. 



Morality the Basis of Social Union 14s 

In the childhood of the race it may be enforced 
by some ruler or conquering chief who, while 
pursuing a selfish end, curbs the violence of the 
unsubjugated will. The effect of such repression 
is of course not directly or necessarily social. 
So far as it induces the servile habit it is distinctly 
anti-social, and taints the will with a vice more 
pernicious and more difficult of cure than any mere 
wildness. But somewhere a line must be drawn 
beyond which the extravagance of self-assertion 
cannot go. Without disabling the will for that 
independent volition which characterises the co- 
operative activity of a genuine social life, the ego 
must be taught some respect for the volition 
of others. Social freedom and contractual rights 
presuppose this respect. 1 

And civilisation begins where this regard for 
others begins, and where some systematic attempt 
is made to enforce it upon the refractory will. 
In all civilised states a steady effort is made to 
protect persons and property from violence 
and rapacity, to control the relations of the 
sexes, and, in general, to enforce respect for 

1 Diese Beziehung von Willen auf Willen ist der eigen- 
thumliche und wahrhafte Boden, in welchem die Freiheit 
Dasein hat. Diese Vermittelung, Eigenthum nicht mehr 
nur vermittelst einer Sache und meines subjektiven Willens 
zu haben, sondern ebenso vermittelst eines anderen Willens, 
und hiermit in einem gemeinsamen Willen zu haben, macht 
die Sphare des Vertrags aus. — Hegel: Philos. des Rechts, 
sec. 71. 



146 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

each in his place and function as a member of 
the social union; in other words, to define and 
protect individual rights. Such effort may be 
at first neither consistent nor intelligent. Men 
are then too unfamiliar with social needs to 
distinguish the essential from the non-essential 
in social conduct, or to hold to any steady con- 
ception of the associative life. But at any rate 
a beginning is made in the systematic training of 
the will in social habit. 

As civilisation advances rules of conduct 
which are found to be necessary for the common 
protection, or useful in promoting common 
ends, tend naturally to receive general approval 
and support. Such rules of conduct are ap- 
proved and supported, as enforced upon others, 
even by men who want the inclination or the 
firmness to adhere to them with consistency 
themselves. Against the will of each is pitted 
the will of all. The individual feels all his life a 
persistent social pressure, a pressure which, how- 
ever obstinate or violent the egoistic impulsion, 
he can never wholly shake off. It is effectively pre- 
sent indeed, as the psychologist assures us, in the 
very form of his thought. 1 And at length this 

1 Man is a social outcome rather than a social unit. — James 
Mark Baldwin: Social and Ethical Interpretations, part i., 
chap, ii., sec. 6. 

The Self of any man comes to consciousness only in con- 
trast with other selves. — Josiah Royce : Outlines of Psychology, 
chap, xii., sec. 115. 



Morality the Basis of Social Union 147 

public approval, with its obverse of censure, be- 
comes explicit and crystallises as social law, 
which is finally, in part at least, adopted by the 
community as positive or tabulated law. And 
society becomes a state when it is incorporated 
for the enforcement of such law. 

We thus reach a definite statement of social 
law, enunciated with the authority of the public 
voice and enforced by penalties publicly inflicted. 
The process by which this consummation is 
reached is not always the same, and there remains 
always a large and varying body of unwritten 
law which from time to time modifies, as it is itself 
modified by, the written prescriptions of positive 
or enacted law. But in every state rights are in 
some sense defined, and provision is made for the 
enforcement of rights. 

Meantime, while juristic and legislative effort 
is engaged in defining the outward relations 
of the social units, the inward development, of 
which social usage and the laws are the objective 
expression, still continues, and becomes itself 
more definite by reaction to definite laws. Rights 
outwardly enforced are by those in whom the sense 
of the common life is strongest and most intelligent 
spontaneously recognised; the social need tends 
to become more and more distinctly a personal 
need; and, finally, to respect all rights, or, ab- 
stractly, the Right, is conceived as a private 
obligation. 



148 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

In time, when the speculative habit has been 
formed, the contemplative mind reflects on the 
source and extent of this obligation. It philoso- 
phises. It elaborates a theory of conduct based on 
what it conceives to be the ground of this obli- 
gation, and, impressed with the importance of 
making men feel the obligation, it undertakes 
to give practical expression to its theory. It 
seeks to clarify the conception of right and at the 
same time to strengthen the conviction that men 
should do the right. Thus there arises a new 
social discipline of deeper intent than the discipline 
of the state, embodying a theory of right or obli- 
gation, on the one hand, and a code of practical 
rules more searching and comprehensive than 
those of the state, on the other. 

So arise the doctrine and discipline of Ethics 
or Morals. Ethics is at first hardly distinguishable 
from Jurisprudence and Politics, 1 and must always 
in virtue of its idealistic aims be closely related to 
Religion. It would seem, indeed, that all public 
functions were originally more or less merged in 
the ministration of Religion. 2 But as the associa- 

1 'H fiiv odv fjJOoSos toilitwv i<plercu, ttoXltik^ tis oC<ro. — Aristotle : 
Eth. Nic, I., ii., 9. 

This, then, is the object of my treatise, which is of a 
political kind. (Browne's tr.) 

2 Quite enough, too, remains of these collections or earliest 
codes both in the east and, in the west to show that they 
mingle up religious, civil, and merely moral ordinances with- 
out any regard to differences in their essential character; 



Morality the Basis of Social Union 1 49 

tive life has developed the social functions have 
been specialised. Religion, it is true, while 
undergoing a development and purification of its 
own, still retains, as general curator of the idealis- 
ing tendencies in our nature, its relation not only 
to morals but to all human effort and feeling. 
But certain functions, legislative, educational, 
artistic, which it once united in itself, have be- 
come at length disengaged, though they cannot 
be regarded as wholly independent of Religion or, 
in all cases, of one another. Politics and Morals 
for instance, have many points of relation. The 
state, which is deeply interested in the conduct 
of its citizens, cannot of course be indifferent 
to their morals. But its point of view is different 
from that of the moralist. In Statecraft or 
Politics it is the outward or formal act which 
is mainly considered, while Morality, as we have 
seen, deals more especially with the springs 
of action, that is, with the inner or psychic attitude 
of the social agent. Morality addresses itself 
distinctively, therefore, to the psychic unit, the 
individual man. Its essential function, in other 
words, is so to reform the individual will that the 
will to do right shall be spontaneous and constant. 
It follows from what we have said that the right, 

and this is sustained by all we know of early thought from 
other sources, the severance of law from morality and of 
religion from law belonging very distinctly to the later ages 
of mental progress. — H. J. S. Maine: Ancient Law, chap. i. 



150 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

if restricted to the field of such rights as are defined 
and enforced by the state, falls short of the Right 
as embracing all that is demanded in fulfilment 
of the moral purpose. The doctrine of rights, 
juridically denned, applies simply to the sphere 
within which each will be protected in his efforts 
to supply his own needs or satisfy his own desires, 
and this sphere is limited by the prescription of 
the law. The Right, as identified with the moral 
prescription, has a much broader scope. Applying 
to the intent rather than to the act, it requires 
that all acts whatsoever shall accord with the 
moral intent, and in its most developed form 
merges with that which Benevolence or Love itself 
might suggest. 

The practical delimitation and adjustment of 
rights is undertaken in the public administration 
of justice. Justice is the determination of inde- 
terminate rights in accordance with the principle 
upon which rights are founded, and the concept 
of Justice may vary as the concept of the Right 
has been seen to vary. Obviously there are limits 
to what can be accomplished by the machinery 
of public justice. The state, which installs 
the machinery, must content itself with rude 
appliances and address itself only to society's most 
imperious needs. It can demand little more than 
is necessary for the conservation of the social body. 
The citizen or social unit is therefore bound in 
the social interest, which presumptively is his 



Morality the Basis of Social Union 151 

own interest, to supplement the minimum of 
righteousness demanded of him by the state 
with the more liberal measure suggested by the 
conception of Justice which is correlative with the 
moral concept of the Right. And to this gen- 
erous service he is prompted by a quick and con- 
trolling sense of Duty. 

Duty, as we are often told, is the obverse of 
Right. It is obvious that neither right nor 
justice can be done unless the citizen is willing to 
serve and support the social union in giving 
effect to its demands; and, granting the necessity 
of maintaining the social state, such service is 
society's due. The recognition by the individual 
of society's right to this service is the sense of 
Duty. 1 And as this sense of Duty, in its moral 
acceptation, arises from the recognition of any 
social requirement which the individual may 
reasonably satisfy, it is not limited to the sphere 
of rights which it is practicable for society to en- 
force. It is the obverse of Right in the broadest 
sense in which the individual apprehends the 
Right. 

But the sense of duty, it should be noted, is not 
always guided by an intelligent conception of 



1 The good of communion, which regards society, usually 
goes by the name of duty, a word that seems more properly 
used of a mind well disposed towards others: whilst the term 
virtue is used of a mind well formed and composed within 
itself. — Bacon: Adv. of Learning, book vn , chap. ii. 



152 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

what is society's due. In fact, the grounds of the 
obligation which it imposes are seldom looked 
for, the mandate of duty being by many regarded 
as a divine decree, either directly transmitted 
from without or, under the name of conscience, 
suggested from within. The sense of duty is 
thus conceived as carrying its own warrant, and 
disposes the subject to resent any question of its 
authority, or even any effort to seek a rational 
ground for its authority. To dispute it or to 
explain it is felt as an impertinence. 

And in this intuitive or instinctive form the 
sense of duty, when it happens to be just, is 
practically most effective. It is by no means 
secure from misdirection, however, and it enters 
into the service of error with the same uncalculat- 
ing devotion and delight in self-sacrifice with 
which it serves the truth. We follow it therefore 
at a certain risk. A mistaken sense of duty, taking 
good for evil and evil for good, may defeat the very- 
ends which duty should bind us to pursue. Urgent 
as is our need of quick instincts and ready-made 
concepts which in a practical emergency can be 
instantly applied, it cannot be more urgent than 
the need that our conduct be directed aright. 
And it is plain that conscience, or the intuitive 
sense of duty, cannot always be right, since its 
mandates are found to conflict. The instinctive 
moral judgment is liable to error, and to detect 
its errors we must revert to the general principles 



Morality the Basis of Social Union 153 

which are founded in the fundamental require- 
ments of the associative life. Justice and Benev- 
olence, Right and Duty, rest in the same ultimate 
need, man's need of the social medium for his 
development and the satisfaction of his pro- 
foundest wants. They are, in fact, but various 
aspects of the same organic law, the law of social 
union. And the aberrations of conscience, that is, 
of the instinctive moral sense, must be corrected 
by comparison of its demands with the principles 
of social organisation as disclosed in experience 
to considerate thought. 



CHAPTER XV 

PROGRESSIVE CHARACTER OF THE MORAL LAW 

SOCIAL organisation is, as we have seen, a 
necessity. It is an indispensable means of 
developing the individual life and enhancing its 
affectional value. And the moral law, resting for 
its authority upon this necessity, defines the 
elementary social relations and the temper or 
general direction o f the will essential to the con- 
solidation of the social union. It lays down 
what we may call the volitional basis of social 
union. 

And here, it would seem, we might properly un- 
dertake to systematise the precepts of morals, or 
to review with some particularity, in the light of 
the theory we are defending, the current moral 
concepts. But such a task does not fall strictly 
within the scope of our purpose. It is not with the 
superstructure but with the foundation of morals 
that we are concerned. 

And we may the more readily be spared such 
a task in view of the presumption which goes with 
the ordinary moral requirements. Their origin 
is not of yesterday. They have been tested by the 
independent experience of many communities 

154 



Progressive Character of Moral Law 155 

through countless generations, and they have 
been tested implicitly or unconsciously by the 
standard which we have attempted to make ex- 
plicit. We may assume, accordingly, that the moral 
consciousness of mankind, in all communities 
where it has had opportunity for free development, 
is in its main demands sound, that is, tends to 
strengthen the social bond. 1 Common morality 
is empirical, it is true, and shows something of the 
weakness of empiricism, something of its false per- 
spective and inconsequence. Its maxims stand 
in need of a clearly denned principle by which 
they may be explained and harmonised, or more 
intelligibly stated. We have attempted to enun- 
ciate such a principle, and we shall carry our 
examination of the social or moral demand no 
further than is necessary to show its conformity 
to this principle. 

We may observe, in the first place, as showing 
the relation of the moral demand to social need, 
that the value imputed to the social virtues is by 
no means constant. The emphasis varies with the 
varying pressure of the social need . History shows 
us communities of men in widely different stages 

1 I have . . . endeavoured to show that the social in- 
stincts — the prime principle of man's moral constitution — 
with the aid of active intellectual powers and the effects of 
habit, naturally lead to the golden rule, "As ye would that 
men should do to you, do ye to them likewise " ; and this lies 
at the foundation of morality. — Darwin: Descent of Man, 
chap. iv. 



156 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

of social development, and as the moral demand in 
any given age and nation roughly represents 
the social need as then felt by the community, 
it should bear on its face some relation to the exist- 
ing phase of social development. We should ex- 
pect this of the true moral demand, that is, of a 
demand which should be based on a true estimate 
of social conditions and requirements. And 
this index of vitality we find in the actual demand . * 
Physical courage, for instance, is in primitive 
times, when the community lies under a permanent 
threat of extinction by foreign foes, pre-eminent 
among the virtues. It is then, in fact, the virtue, 
the sign of virility or essential manhood. But as 
the community feels itself more secure and war 
ceases to be its main occupation, qualities despised 
by the warrior, or contemptuously approved as 
the virtues of an inferior order, come in time to 
outrank the more soldierly attributes. Industry, 
for example, or the capacity for continuous toil, has 
in our day lost the servile implication which it 
long carried over from more militant times, and 
commands the respect which its importance to the 
social fabric justifies. Mere indolence, on the 
other hand, though generally despised, is not 
branded as distinctly immoral. The reason is not 

1 Each of the leading modes of social existence determines 
for itself a certain system of morals and manners. — Auguste 
Comte: Positive Philosophy, book vi., chap, iii., p. 470 
(Martineau's tr.). 



Progressive Character of Moral Law 157 

far to seek. The eye of the community is most 
anxiously directed to the point where danger is 
most feared, and though idleness in a community 
which has ceased to be predatory were, if general, 
as fatal to the aims of society as stealing, lying, 
intemperance, or any recognised vice, and would 
at once arrest its growth, there appears to be no 
imminent peril of such arrest. Indolence, more- 
over, in an industrial community carries its own 
penalty. Men feel that the idle and thriftless may 
in general be left to the spur of necessity or 
abandoned with indifference to their fate. 

No such obvious penalty attaches, however, to 
treachery and deceit, vices from which society is 
constantly in peril of disintegration. That men 
should be able to trust at least their associates is, 
even in rude times, a condition of associative action. 
Sincerity and good faith, qualities which inspire 
confidence, are therefore rated high, and the 
condemnation of falsehood and perfidy, especially 
as between "neighbours," is correspondingly severe. 
And with the increasing complexity of social re- 
lations which comes with social development the 
interdependence of the social units grows more 
complete, and the demand for qualities which 
inspire confidence becomes more general. In 
modern society, in fact, this demand is para- 
mount. A man must trust his fellow-men at every 
turn ; he must trust even where treachery is feared. 
It is inevitable therefore that in the scale of moral 



158 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

values a progressively higher rank should be given 
to the qualities which secure us against betrayal 
and justify our trust. When a man inwardly is 
that which outwardly he seems to be, when his 
actions are as his speech, and he meets us with 
the directness of a fearless simplicity, we feel that 
his character, whatever its faults of excess or 
defect, is in all essentials moral. Integrity is 
now, in place of valour, the type and summation of 
virtue. In this quality our complex society 
coheres. 

Further illustration of the practical character 
and constant modulation of the moral demand 
may be found in the varying interpretation of the 
general virtue of temperance or self-control. Self- 
control implies a type from which by self-abandon- 
ment we may diverge. Guided by this principle, 
abstractly conceived, we should censure with equal 
voice all incontinence or aberration from the 
type. Society, however, looking to practical 
issues and economising effort, marks for special 
condemnation only such forms of incontinence 
as appear to involve grave consequence and 
threaten the social well-being. Instance anger, 
once the moralist's pet theme, 1 when impulses 
were violent and manners were rude, but less 
adverted to since manners were softened; and 
drunkenness, an intermittent mania which unfits 

1 L. Annaeus Seneca: Minor Dialogues; Plutarch: Morals; 
Epictetus: Discourses, book i., chap, xxviii. 



Progressive Character of Moral Law 159 

a man for all social duty, and which is condemned 
for that reason, while gluttony, equally incontinent 
but less obviously harmful, is condoned. On the 
other hand, among violations of the principleof self- 
control which are condemned with increasing 
severity are certain forms of sexual excess. These, 
as the source of patent and immediate evil as 
well as of insidious and far-reaching social taint, 
are singled out for censure as in an eminent 
sense incontinent; and the censure is the more 
severe the more sensible man becomes of the 
injury wrought by vices which corrupt the social 
bond. 

This shifting of the emphasis which society 
places upon the demands which we class as moral 
strengthens our contention that morality is founded 
in social need. Assuming that the moral law is 
organic social law, we should expect to find in a 
developing society subject to this law some 
variation in the rigour with which society enforces 
any particular rule. Relatively to all such rules, 
the great end alone, the complete social union of 
mankind, may be taken as constant. A uniform 
inflexible rule, or a mere indurated custom, 
divorced from the moral judgment and treated as 
itself the end, were therefore a sign of moral 
decadence instead of moral life. The social de- 
mand, to maintain its character as vital moral 
law, must show that it can shape itself with the 
plasticity of a vital principle as a means to the 



160 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

moral end. And something of this plasticity we 
have found in actual social law. In this respect 
at least social law coincides with what we have 
characterised as the true moral demand. And, 
so far, it confirms our account of the nature of this 
demand. 

It is important to note, however, that the actual 
social demand, though pressed as moral, does not 
necessarily coincide at all points with the true 
moral demand, that is, with the necessities of the 
social situation as in truth it confronts us. Society, 
even in its moral development, does not cease to be 
an association of fallible human beings. Errors of 
fact and errors of judgment are reflected in all 
human law, and the social demand, which owes 
its validity to its identity with the true moral de- 
mand, may be, and sometimes is, but the expression 
of a social prejudice. Every community has the 
defects of its qualities, and every community 
looks with lenient eye on offences which spring 
from a prevailing moral weakness. A society, 
like an individual, may even mistake its vices for 
virtues. More than one nation has gone down, 
for instance, in the lust and exaltation of mere 
power. 

While therefore we are bound to respect the 
garnered wisdom of mankind as expressed in the 
moral traditions of the race, it is of the last im- 
portance that such traditions be not received 
with the dread reverence which holds them too 



Progressive Character of Moral Law 161 

sacred for analysis, question, or suggestion. Like 
the deliverances of conscience, they are, after all, 
human in their utterance. They constitute, un- 
doubtedly, the richest gift which humanity can 
bequeath to its heirs, and no sound judgment 
will underestimate the force of a behest laid upon 
us with the whole authority of the past. But the 
moral life is in the end a personal life. It is the 
product of individual feeling and judgment reacting 
upon the general moral opinion and the traditions 
which it embodies. It cannot therefore be me- 
chanically imposed from without. It demands 
the intelligent and sympathetic assent of the 
person, that is, of an independent and rational 
will. And the person, reacting to common opinion 
and the social tradition, contributes from his 
individual character and experience just that 
element which is necessary to vitalise the tradition, 
and convert it from a mere heirloom, the relics and 
exuviae of the past, into a valid and continuously 
developing law. 1 

1 A time always comes at which the moral principles 
originally adopted have been carried out to all their legitimate 
consequences, and then the system founded on them becomes 
as rigid, as unexpansive, and as liable to fall behind moral 
progress as the sternest code of rules avowedly legal. — Henry 
J. Sumner Maine: Ancient Law, chap. iii. 



CHAPTER XVI 

PRESCRIPTIVE MORALITY AND THE MORAL SPIRIT 

BUT were the actual demand, as embodied in any- 
possible statement, cleared of inconsistency 
and error, it could not embrace in its prescriptions 
the complete moral demand. We may agree upon 
an abstract definition of the general moral end, and 
we may supplement the injunction to pursue this 
end with subsidiary rules, such as, Thou shalt 
do no murder, Thou shalt not steal, Honour thy 
father and mother, and the like. But we cannot 
completely or adequately define each immoral 
act, or, on the other hand, every act which we may 
allow to be moral. The juridical code we found 
to be restricted by the limits of its power to enforce 
its provisions. We may add that neither the 
moral code nor any possible code can definitely 
prescribe the whole course of human conduct. 

Even such particular injunctions as we have 
instanced are abstract, and require interpretation 
as applied to any actual case. The term ' ' murder ' ' 
does not always define itself. For the same act, 
if the act has a political bearing, a man may be 
hanged as a murderer and lauded as a hero. 

162 



Prescriptive Morality 163 

But wherever the relations of the parties to the 
act are of a familiar or well established type the 
necessary interpretation is furnished by tradition 
or precedent or common opinion. In private 
relations we are fairly well agreed as to what 
constitutes murder, and ordinarily we have 
little trouble in understanding what is meant 
by perjury or theft. Changes of relation, however, 
embarrass an old rule with new difficulties. Family 
life, for instance, has been disturbed by the in- 
tellectual emancipation of woman. But while the 
modern woman stands in open revolt against the 
rule, once general, that the husband may exact 
strict obedience from his wife, opinion is by no 
means agreed as to the accommodation by which 
a divided supremacy shall not lead to anarchy. 

In public affairs opinion may be still more at 
fault. We find it floundering among principles 
none of which it will venture to gainsay, and none 
of which it knows how to apply. When the 
government, for example, imposes a discriminating 
tax in favour of a certain industry, opinion is 
divided as to whether the discrimination is or is 
not robbery. The laws, and the execution of the 
laws, against gambling and sexual irregularities 
offer further illustration of this divergence of 
opinion. In like manner the question whether 
murder lies at the door of a government which 
engages in the horrible carnage of war is a question 
about which, in any given case, the parties and 



164 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

their adherents will wrangle without hope of 
agreement. That international action is amen- 
able to social law probably no moralist would 
dispute. To the general human interest all inter- 
ests must be made subordinate. But opinion is 
guided by no clear and well-recognised description 
of the particular public acts which run counter 
to this interest and which must be treated as 
national crimes. 

It thus appears that the prohibitions of the 
moral code, simple and direct as we conceive 
them to be, are by no means exhaustive descrip- 
tions of the acts which they prohibit. They are 
adequate in common cases, where the common 
consciousness supplements with point and circum- 
stance the abstract mandate of the code. But in 
extraordinary cases, where experience is wanting, 
or where the matter is too complex to be grasped 
by the common understanding, common rules are 
applied with hesitation and distrust. In fact, the 
moral disputation so frequent in ordinary discourse, 
touching, for instance, the obligations of a citizen, 
our duty to the poor, the limits of private resent- 
ment, show that undetermined cases arise even 
in the course of common experience. Life, in 
short, cannot be reduced to rule. 1 We may 
summarise in a rule the results of experience, and 

1 There are few laws the breach of which (in obedience to 
a higher law) morality does not allow. — F. H. Bradley: 
Ethical Studies, p. 142 (Anast. reprint). 



Prescriptive Morality 165 

where the case is simple and the experience 
common, the rule will commonly suffice. But 
where the rule fails, or where we are in doubt what 
rule to apply, we must fall back on the reason of 
all rules. We must recur to the general social law 
that whatever we do shall be done in the fra- 
ternal spirit which looks to the union of our kind 
in a common effort to enhance the value of life. 

The moral life, in other words, requires the 
guidance of a judgment which is in sympathy 
with the moral end. The mind must be imbued 
with the moral spirit. The practical value of 
rules is indisputably great. They furnish us 
with a ready solution of problems which cannot 
wait for the laboured analysis of an unforeseen sit- 
uation in the light of the general principle. And 
for the most part, as we have seen, they carry in 
the common thought their own interpretation. 
But the rule, without interpretation, is abstract, 
indefinite, and incomplete, and the same spirit 
which led to the acceptance of the rule must 
guide the conscience in interpreting and supple- 
menting the rule. One need not be a philosopher, 
of course, to be informed by this spirit. The 
moral obligation may be divined, so to speak, 
with practical effect on the will, by a mind which 
has little skill to analyse or define the process by 
which its conclusions are reached. But in some 
way the tendency of the will must be harmonised 
with the moral aim. The moral life is the expres- 



1 66 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

sion of a purpose, and one must be in some effective 
sense governed by this purpose in order to interpret 
and, when need arises, to supplement the prescrip- 
tions of the moral law. 

Whether therefore we regard the precepts of 
morals from the point of view of justice defining 
rights, or of duty prompting service, or of good- 
will scattering benefits, we cannot hope to grasp 
their true meaning unless we feel and share their 
intent. Justice applying the rule in indifference 
to the reason of the rule becomes irrational and 
oppressive, that is to say, unjust. Duty absorbed 
in the routine of service becomes mechanic and 
renders lifeless and inadequate service. The 
good-will which is merely personal becomes arbi- 
trary, and even in private affairs pernicious; 
while in matters of public moment, putting the 
person before the state, it may corrupt the admin- 
istration and debase the character of the state. 
The processes of self-development, even, lose their 
main impetus and interest, and tend to restriction 
and shrinkage of the self, if the personal good is 
conceived as dissociated from the common good. 
In fine, the moral spirit alone, intelligently pursu- 
ing the moral end, can vitalise the moral law, and 
build the acts of the will into a genuine moral 
life. 

And the moral spirit is under every guise the 
same. Whether it wear the sad feature of Duty, 
or the stern visage of Justice, or the gracious mien 



Prescriptive Morality 167 

of Love, it is the same synthetic vivifying principle, 
reducing the strife of will against will, and blending 
the jarring elements of social life into a union of 
free, intelligent, and consentient minds. Duty 
must be done , duty which disciplines the will . And 
justice must be done, justice which strikes that 
it may heal. But when duty and justice are 
done, the moral spirit appears in its proper guise 
as Love, which alone can be in all things dutiful 
and just, Love, the formative spirit, whose office 
is to mould the contentious purposes of men into 
the strong and constant will of Man — 

" Man, one harmonious soul of many a soul, 
Whose nature is its own divine control." 



SECTION V 

Moral Discipline 
CHAPTER XVII 

THE STATE'S RIGHT TO PUNISH 

WITHIN the boundaries of every social group 
is included an element which is so reckless 
in its disregard of social law, or the conditions of 
the associative life, that it threatens the integrity 
of the group. This unruly element society as the 
state undertakes by force to repress. The state 
prohibits by law offences against the peace and 
order of the state, and punishes, according to a 
graduated scale of penalties, infractions of the 
law. And in face of the ever imminent peril of 
social dissolution it shrinks from no necessary 
severity. As occasion requires it deprives men 
of property, of liberty, of life. 

This punitive function the state everywhere 
assumes. Taking human nature as we find it, 
the distinction between right and wrong were 
futile if no effort were made to enforce the right, 
and to prevent or punish or redress a wrong. 

168 



The State's Right to Punish 169 

And the general right of the state to inflict 
punishment will scarcely be disputed. There is 
some contention, however, as to the nature and 
ground of the right. 

A common theory touching this right is that 
it is a form of the so-called right of self-defence, 
which is conceived as "inherent" or "natural," 
that is, as a right which neither requires nor is 
capable of explanation. Like other principles 
which resist our analysis it is regarded as ultimate. 
And the function of punishment, whatever else it 
is, is undoubtedly protective. As inflicted by the 
state, punishment is directed against attacks upon 
the social order, that is, against acts which 
threaten the very existence of society and the 
state. It may be regarded therefore as a measure 
of self-defence or self-conservation on the part of 
the state. But the principle of self -conservation 
cannot in itself be made the basis of a right. It 
is in accordance with the principle of self-con- 
servation that a cat springs at a mouse, and the 
mouse acts upon the same principle when it strug- 
gles to escape. But, apart from ideas borrowed 
from human social relations, there is no question 
of right in the case. A right implies some principle 
recognised as common, and there is in the nature 
of the animals no common principle upon which 
a right could be based. The two natures are 
simply incompatible. The cat with its instincts 
persists at the expense of the mouse. 



170 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

And we may say, generally, that there is in the 
instinct of self-conservation, which includes the 
instinct of self-defence, nothing which will lead 
us forth of the self, or tend to establish any ground 
of rights. It is indeed part of the endowment of 
human nature to which, as to other instincts 
and impulses, the doctrine of rights may be ap- 
plied. But the gratification of the instinct is of 
itself not properly a right. It becomes a right 
only as permitted and defined by some principle 
which co-ordinates the self with other beings 
having a common nature, and by which place 
and limits are assigned to the operation of the 
instinct. I may defend myself, but with a proviso. 
It is not the instinct, therefore, but the instinct 
as subordinated to the principle, which falls within 
the field of rights. 

This limiting principle we may trace, ultimately, 
to the social impulse and our social needs, which 
are tacitly assumed to be paramount to all other 
impulses and needs. The self conserving itself 
in the narrow or physical sense is in its relations 
to others mainly destructive. But the self con- 
ceived as a human being in the complete sense of 
the word needs, as we have seen, association 
with other human beings for the conservation 
and adequate discharge of its social, intellectual, 
and characteristic functions. Apart from society 
human life, we feel, would be relatively worthless. 
Hence the institution of society is our most im- 



The State's Right to Punish 17 1 

perious need. The social demand is supreme. 
And rights arise upon such limitation of the 
sphere of individual impulse and activity as is 
implied in the existence of the social order. 
Rights define, in fact, the boundaries of such 
activity, and the gratification of the instinct of 
self-defence, or of any propensity of our nature, 
becomes a right only as limited and allowed in 
conformity with the conditions of social life. 
If men lived isolated lives, if they recognised 
no common interests and engaged in no common 
pursuits, there would be no occasion for the defi- 
nition or the conception of rights. An unqualified 
egoism would prevail. But men, being by nature 
social, are found everywhere associated in groups 
having a community of interests. Such com- 
munity of interests can of course be maintain- 
ed only on terms of individual restraint. The 
definition of these terms is the definition of 
rights. And what we call inherent or natural 
rights are simply the elementary terms of associa- 
tion which are so universally assumed that they 
seem to need no justification in any other prin- 
ciple. Natural rights and all rights are grounded 
in social need. 1 

1 Das Recht ist also der InbegrifiE der Bedingungen, unter 
denen die Willkiir des Einen mit der Willkiir des Anderen 
nach einem allgemeinen Gesetze der Freiheit zusammen ver- 
einigt werden kann. — Kant: Metaphysik der Sitten, Einleitung 
in die Rechtslehre, sec. B. 

Das strikte Recht kann auch als die Moglichkeit eines mit 



172 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

The justification of the state, then, in punishing 
infraction of its laws lies ultimately in the necessity, 
universally felt, of the associative life. And as the 
essential conditions of this life, so far as they 
concern the general form of volitional action, are 
expressed in the moral law, punishment may 
rightly be inflicted only for violation of such laws 
as are either founded upon or in harmony with 
the moral law. The action of the state stands 
always in need of social or moral justification. 
Laws may in fact be arbitrary, that is, demanded 
by no social need. But no right vests in the 
state to punish infraction of such laws save the 
ill-defined right by which the state may claim, 
as universal protector, the obedience of its 
citizens even to laws which are not wholly just. 
The human mind could not devise a system 
of laws which should do no injustice, and it were 
better, in the social interest, to suffer a little 
wrong than to weaken the hands of the great con- 
servator of right. 1 But the state is not clothed, 
in virtue of this concession to human fallibility , 
with the right to enforce obedience in respect of 

Jedermanns Freiheit nach allgemeinen Gesetzen zusammen- 
stimmenden durchgangigen wechselseitigen Zwanges vorge- 
stellt werden. — lb., sec. E. 

1 And thus among civilised people, after the distinction 
between law and morality is fully established, it comes 
to be understood that it is a specific moral duty to obey 
existing positive law, not only when we cannot see the reason 
for it, but when we think the reason a bad one. — Frederick 
Pollock: Essays in Jurisprudence and Ethics, p. 25. 



The State's Right to Punish 173 

all that it may choose to command, whether it be 
monarch, senate, or demos that stands for the state. 
History is not without examples, indeed, of govern- 
ment which, viewed in its general relation to its 
subjects, is organised wrong. But if the laws are 
fairly just, they are simply the assertion of prin- 
ciples which an offender, when he participates in 
the privileges of social life, himself asserts. In 
other words, as against society insisting on com- 
pliance with the true conditions of social order no 
man can have any right whatever, since rights 
arise only on the assumption that the require- 
ments of social order are paramount . The moment 
a man asserts a right as a right he recognises social 
law and social obligations, and appeals to principles 
which justify punishment for infraction of the law. 
An anti-social right is a contradiction in terms. 
In point of fact it were hard to conceive how 
any man may live within the body of society 
without being a party to the social convention. 
From birth man breathes a social atmosphere, and 
throughout life, in his acts, in his speech, in his 
very thoughts, as we have seen, he reflects the 
character of the social medium, 1 and assumes, 

1 Thus the normal inner life of reflection, of conscience, 
of meditation, and of the so-called "spiritual ego " in general, 
is simply, in us human beings, an imitation, a brief abstract 
and epitome, of our literal social life. We have no habits 
of self-consciousness which are not derived from social habits, 
counterparts thereof. — Josiah Royce: Anomalies of Self -con- 
sciousness ; Psych. Rev., September, 1895. 



174 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

however wild his life, social obligations. By 
constantly asserting and enjoying rights, which 
are the terms upon which the social life is main- 
tained, he accepts those terms. He may protest 
against certain of the terms actually imposed 
and denounce them as unjust. But the charge of 
injustice has no meaning except as implying 
recognition of the just, or of that which can be 
required as of right and which he is willing to accept. 
To justify himself, therefore, in refusing sub- 
mission to tribunals where justice is administered, 
if such refusal be possible, he must withdraw 
from the general sphere of rights. He must 
abandon his fellow-men and fly to the woods 
or sail to some desert isle. 

We repeat, then, that the right to inflict punish- 
ment is based, as is every other right, on the 
constitutional demand of human nature for human 
association. Man's need of society is imperative. 
But society, without the power to inflict punish- 
ment for violation of the terms of social life, 
were impossible. Man's need of society is there- 
fore no more imperative than is the need for 
punishing infractions of social law. The necessity 
is in both cases the same, and it is for humanity 
supreme. 

And the same considerations which make good 
the state's right to punish serve also to define the 
function and scope of punitive laws. The office 
of punishment is to preserve social order. The 



The State's Right to Punish 175 



state, or society in its executive aspect, finds pun- 
ishment necessary to prevent certain acts which 
threaten the freedom of social life and the integrity 
of the state; and beyond what is necessary to 
prevent such acts the state has no right, save in 
educational discipline, to impose any penalties or 
pains whatever. It is the social necessity which 
confers the right to punish, and the limit of the 
necessity is the limit of the right. When, there- 
fore, punishment is carried beyond this limit 
the right fails to go with it; that is, the punish- 
ment ceases to be just, loses in fact its character 
as punishment, and becomes a mere act of retalia- 
tion or a wanton infliction of pain. 

It is sometimes urged that the proper aim of 
punishment is the reformation of the criminal. 
And it is true that punishment would be vain if 
it did not succeed, to some extent at least, in 
repressing crime, and in so far reforming the 
actual or possible criminal. In this sense all 
punishment by the state is reformatory : it checks 
the criminal intent. But to regard the house of 
correction as a mere school for the reform of the 
actual offender under duress were to miss the 
main efficacy of punishment. The main efficacy 
of punishment is in its force as a threat. If the 
effect of punishment went no further than the con- 
vict we could hardly consider it seriously as a 
social remedy at all. But the punishment inflicted 
for crime committed acts as a deterrent in the 



17 6 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

minds of a number of possible criminals, who 
would cease to be deterred if punishment were 
robbed of its terrors and converted into a mere 
educational discipline for offenders who have 
been caught. And the threat is the more effective 
because it appeals to a social being and looks to 
the social good. 

But while the prevention of crime must be 
considered as the primary aim of punishment, 
the reformation of the convicted criminal is an 
important secondary aim. It is clearly in the 
interest of society no less than of the criminal 
that punishment should be educational, so far as it 
can be educational without ceasing to be deterrent. 
Punishment, as a remedy, is an appeal to men's 
fears, and while fear may prevent us from doing 
harm it cannot of itself operate as a motive for 
good. It may be employed, as in the training 
of children, to induce the form of the moral habit 
pending the development of a true moral spirit. 
But fear alone cannot inspire the positive good- 
will which is the essence of the moral spirit. 
The effect of punishment for good is therefore 
negative and indirect, and if it were possible, 
generally, to replace the fear of punishment 
by a positive motive inspiring good-will, the appeal 
to fear would be but a blundering makeshift. 
It is but a makeshift at best. Its justification 
is, as we have said, its necessity. It operates 
quickly where delay would imperil the social order, 



The State's Right to Punish 177 

and it operates in cases where gentler means, 
the direct appeal to good-will, would be ineffectual. 
There can be no doubt, however, that the appeal 
to fear might be made less urgent if more attention 
were given to the instillation of just ideas and to 
the discipline of the will before the criminal intent 
has matured and the criminal habit is set, and more 
effort were made to correct the conditions which 
foster criminal desires. Though the function of 
punishment is not primarily educational, the 
necessity of punishment might by educational 
discipline and social reforms be greatly reduced. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

PUNISHMENT AND RESPONSIBILITY 

PUNISHMENT, it appears, is a conservative 
device applied by the state to certain, morbid 
conditions in the body of society which imperil 
social institutions. And its operation is intended 
to be general. Its direct purpose is neither to rem- 
edy the mischief actually done nor to improve 
the character of the man who has done it. Its 
intent is broader than this. It is meant to give 
effect to a permanent threat directed against 
whatever criminal tendencies may be lurking in the 
corporate life of the state, and to prevent such 
tendencies from maturing in the criminal act. By 
correcting the will it seeks to forestall the act. 

The question of punishment is thus a question 
of the artificial readjustment of motives. The 
moralist insists, it is true, that the natural effects 
of conduct are adequate, without art or coercion 
of the state, to resolve the purpose of the rational 
mind in favour of virtue. A man's action, we are 
told, evokes in the agent himself and in his social 
environment a reaction which is certain and 
sufficient. But the main impulsion of our minds 
is instinctive rather than reflective, and the animal 

178 



Punishment and Responsibility 179 

and self-regarding instincts are in most men still 
overweighted or the scope of the social instincts 
is too narrow. As against the train of evil 
tendency or the tumult of passion, therefore, 
the sane and social motive needs reinforcement. 
And such reinforcement is intended to be supplied 
through fear of the punishment or pain which is 
artificially subjoined by the state to violation 
of the social or rational law. 1 

It follows, now, since punishment is addressed 
to the will, that none but voluntary acts, or acts 
which, themselves not intended, are directly 
traceable to voluntary acts, are properly obnoxious 
to punishment. Acts which do not proceed from 
the will cannot be influenced, of course, by motives 
addressed to the will. A hunter who kills his com- 
panion by the accidental discharge of his gun does 
not will the death of his friend, and is not amenable 
therefore to the penalities which attach to wilful 
homicide. If he was negligent, however, in the 
handling of his piece, his negligence was wilful, 
and, inasmuch as the result was such as might 
have been foreseen, deserves punishment more or 
less severe. So the sentinel who lies down at 
his post, and then involuntarily falls asleep, 

1 L'esprit de l'homme a devance l'organisation du groupe, 
et Ton a tache de remedier aux defauts naturels de l'homme 
et de la societe par l'organisation d'une sanction artificielle 
destined a suppleer aux insuffisances et aux injustices de 
l'autre [the natural sanction]. — F. Paulhan: La Sanction 
Morale; Rev. Philos., April, 1894, p. 404. 



180 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

may be punished, because he knows when he 
voluntarily throws himself on the ground the 
difficulty of keeping awake. The point of appli- 
cation is in all cases the will. The act of the will 
may be remote from the act reprehended, but it 
is not too remote so long as the volitional act is 
known by the agent to be in determinative rela- 
tions with the act for which he is punished. And 
it is not too remote because punishment may 
in such cases be effective. Reaching the will, 
punishment reaches the known consequences of 
the wilful act. Hence a man is held in law to will 
the known or probable consequences of any act 
which he wills. Where, however, the point of 
application in the will is wanting, where, for 
instance, the consequences of an act could not 
have been foreseen or suspected, the threat of 
punishment could not have influenced the will to 
act, and punishment would necessarily be futile 
and therefore unjust. 

The fear of punishment, again, can serve as a 
deterrent to such minds alone as can appreciate 
the relation between the act and its penalty, that 
is, can understand what the punishment is for. 
Hence punishments enforced against ordinary 
offenders are not inflicted upon children or the 
insane. Where the mind cannot perceive the in- 
tent of the penalty, or the nature of the act from 
which the will is to be deterred, the threat of the 
penalty is from the nature of the case inopera- 



Punishment and Responsibility 181 

tive, and punishment is a useless infliction of 
pain. 

It does not follow, however, that the discipline 
of pain is wholly inapplicable to a defective or 
undeveloped mind. Such discipline we apply to 
young children, and a relatively low order of 
intelligence can learn to appreciate a constant 
relation between acts and pains. So the horse 
learns to mind the rein and the retriever to 
bring back his bird. But pains so inflicted are 
educational rather than punitive. Their effect 
runs no further than to the creature that suffers 
them. Yet even here, the object being to induce 
certain habits of action through the education of 
the will, the relation of punishment to the act 
forbidden must be made plain. In other words 
the intelligence of the disciplined mind must be 
such that when desire impels to the act some 
representation of pain may be associated with the 
idea of the act. 

Having briefly but perhaps sufficiently discussed 
the purpose and scope of punishment, we turn to 
the question of responsibility, which is indeed but 
another phase of the question of punishment. 

When an act has been done which on its face is 
punishable it is not always apparent on whom the 
punishment should fall. We ask then, who is 
responsible? A bridge breaks down, for instance, 
when crossed by a train of cars, and the result 
is an appalling loss of life. We look for the 



182 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

cause. We know, of course, that the accident as a 
physical event is the effect of many co-operating 
causes. These however are of interest to us, 
when we undertake to fix the question of respon- 
sibility, only as pointing to some volitional agent 
but for whose act of omission or commission the 
accident would not have happened. If it can 
be shown that the bridge was sound, that the 
abutments were firm, that the train was pro- 
ceeding at no greater speed than ordinary prudence 
would suggest; if, in short, it appears that no re- 
prehensible or punishable act formed an essential 
element in the composition of causes which pro- 
duced the disaster, the question of responsibility 
is eliminated. No man is responsible. The act 
is, in common-law language, the act of God. If 
it appears, however, that the engineer, anxious 
perhaps to make up for lost time, was driving, 
in disregard of his instructions or of the dictates 
of prudence, at an excessive rate of speed, we say 
he is the man on whom punishment should fall. 
Or if he is incompetent we may say that the man 
who appointed him should be punished. Re- 
sponsibility for the accident is then fixed. 

The question of responsibility is thus bound up 
with the question of punishment. Punishment, 
it is true, may in cases not classed as criminal 
take the form of mere reparation, which, in the 
public administration of justice, is distinguished 
from punishment. But the distinction, though 



Punishment and Responsibility 183 

important in determining whether the injurious 
agent shall be made to suffer in purse or in person 
for the injury done, may be disregarded here. 
Any man is responsible who may properly be 
punished, or in some way made to suffer, for an in- 
jurious act. The terms are convertible. The 
general conditions under which punishment may 
justly be inflicted are therefore the general con- 
ditions which determine the fact of responsibility. 
The offence must be voluntary, either directly, as 
being the deed actually intended, or indirectly, 
through its known or knowable relations to the in- 
tentional act; and the aim of the prohibition, or 
the threatened penalty, must be understood. If 
a man by false information which for good reason 
he believes to be true misleads a traveller to his 
hurt, he is not responsible. Nor should we hold 
an idiot or a little child responsible for setting 
fire to a house. The harm may be in either case 
as great as if it had been done with full knowledge 
and with deliberate intent to injure. But the 
conditions of responsibility are wanting. The 
injury done by the false information cannot be 
traced to any fault of the will, and so could not have 
been prevented by the introduction of motives de- 
signed to correct the action of the will. In cases 
like that of the idiot or the child, the relation 
of the act to any penalty subjoined to the act 
is beyond the grasp of the mind, and fear of the 
penalty could not operate therefore as a deterrent 



184 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

of the will. The cases are not of the kind to which 
the threat of punishment applies; or, in other 
words, the agent is not responsible. 

It may happen, however, where there is no 
doubt of the fact of a man's responsibility, that 
there is still some question as to the degree in which 
he may be held accountable. And the limits be- 
tween which his accountability may range are 
wide. An injury inflicted as intended involves, 
for a mind of normal clearness and strength, 
complete responsibility. An injury, on the other 
hand, which is but the remote effect of an act not 
injurious in itself involves less responsibility 
than an injury directly intended ; and the responsi- 
bility will be proportionate, other things equal, 
to the degree of certainty with which the injurious 
effect could have been foreseen. A guardian is 
not required to make good every loss incurred 
through investment of the funds of his ward. 
But he is bound to exercise care. A man cannot 
foresee all the consequences of any act, and he 
must in any case take the risks of his act ; but the 
responsibility of a trustee is the greater as the 
risk which he takes as trustee is known, or should 
be known, to be greater. 

But the capacity to foresee the consequences of 
an act, or to appreciate its risks, varies in any 
given situation with the intelligence of the agent. 
Standards of conduct also vary, as we have seen, 
on different levels of civilisation. Strictly speak- 



Punishment and Responsibility 185 

ing, therefore, the degree of responsibility too 
should show parallel differences. And a lately 
reclaimed savage would not, in fact, be held in 
a court of morals to the same rigorous account- 
ability as a graduate of the schools or a man 
versed in affairs. Public law, however, cannot, 
in ordinary cases, recognise such a distinction. 
Any general attempt to make such a distinction 
would lead only to confusion, since the law has 
no practicable means by which it could classify 
men generally in accordance with a graduated 
scale of responsibility. Much is left nevertheless 
to the discretion of the courts. And in the 
exercise of this discretion the courts do as a matter 
of fact take into consideration, when fixing the 
penalty for an offence, the youth, inexperience, 
and other circumstances bearing on the measure 
of accountability of an offender. The law makes 
its penalties more or less elastic for the very 
purpose of allowing this discretion. 

But the limits of responsibility are not passed 
when we have passed the jurisdiction of the courts. 
There are many acts prejudicial to society with 
which the law cannot deal without working greater 
mischief than that which it seeks to cure. Ill 
temper, avarice, ill-will, for instance, and even 
good -will ill directed, may work irreparable harm 
without transgression of any law which it is practi- 
cable to enforce ; and there are social irregularities 
which cannot be suppressed without such tyran- 



1 86 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

nous supervision of private affairs as would 
put an end to personal freedom. For such extra- 
juridical offences men are responsible to society 
in general, and the only punitive remedy appli- 
cable in such cases is that of private censure or 
of an adverse public opinion. But punishment 
in this form loses something of its artificial 
character. So far as it springs from an instinctive 
and spontaneous source rather than from a cool 
intent to pronounce the social verdict, it may be 
classed among the natural consequences of evil 
conduct. 1 On the other hand, conduct may be 
censured with much natural feeling and yet with 
the distinct intent to punish in society's name. 
Even judges pronounce sentence with a fervour of 
indignation. It is not easy, therefore, to draw 
any absolute line between the superposed and the 
self-wrought effects of wrong-doing. We might 
indeed apply the term punishment to the total 
reaction of pain upon the evil or anti-social act, 
and so persistent is our demand for the punish- 
ment of wrong that we do in fact so apply the 
term. Whatever a man suffers for his acts is 
regarded as in punishment of his acts. The 
criminal has to fear the retributive justice of both 
gods and men. But there are practical reasons 
for emphasising the artificial character of punish- 

1 Compare Bentham's account of what he calls the physical 
and the moral sanctions. — Principles of Morals and Legisla- 
tion, chap, iii., sees, ii., iii., v. 



Punishment and Responsibility 187 

ment, as such, since we may fail, regarding the 
artificial and obvious penalty as complete and 
sufficient, to be impressed by the wide and ever 
extending scope of the natural outcome of evil. 
On the other hand we may cherish the illusion, 
when the artificial and obvious penalty is wanting, 
that evil is immune. This is a costly error. 
And to avoid this error the truth should be 
grasped and firmly held that suffering follows 
by inherent law both ignorance and wrong; that 
suffering, of pain or privation, is their natural 
fruit. 

And the bitter fruit of wrong should suffice 
to deter us from wrong. But the bitterness of the 
fruit cannot be anticipated by all or appreciated 
in the foretaste. For the ruder or more sensuous 
intelligence the pains of requital must hit the sense 
with strong and obvious impact; the natural 
sequence must be accentuated by the heavy 
intonation of human law. But by spirits more 
finely touched the necessary issue of evil, in the 
nature of the agent no less than in the acts and 
attitude of his fellows, is seen to be so far-reaching 
and profound that the threat of the law is by 
comparison idle. And it is a main part of the 
office of the moralist to expose this natural 
fruitage of evil. 



CHAPTER XIX 

RESPONSIBILITY AS RELATED TO FREEDOM AND 
CAUSATION IN WILLING 

IT is implied in the theory of punishment here 
advanced that the volitional agent may be 
controlled from without. Through pain or the 
threat of pain, the theory asserts, we undertake 
to check or correct certain known vices of volitional 
action, a procedure which involves the causal 
determination of the willing subject. 

But causal determination is held to be incom- 
patible with freedom. The causal sequence, we 
are told, is a necessary sequence, and necessity 
is the antithesis of freedom. And with freedom 
destroyed what becomes of human responsibility ? 
So far as our doctrine involves the causal modi- 
fication of the will it would seem, in the light of 
this objection, to cut away the ground of freedom 
and responsibility alike. The point, though much 
laboured, demands consideration. 

If we examine the relation of cause and effect 
in the inorganic realm we find there, taking the 
ordinary view, no room for freedom. Given the 
cause, the effect, we say, must follow: the effect 
is determined in form and made necessary as an 

188 



Responsibility and Freedom 189 

event by the cause. Like causes, we observe, 
acting under like conditions yield invariably like 
results; and, impressed by the certainty of this 
sequence, we conceive of the effect as controlled 
through some external necessity imposed by the 
cause. Heat, we commonly say, makes metals 
expand; the wind sweeps the sea, driving the 
waves in its fury and dashing them helpless on the 
shore ; and our whole planetary system is controlled 
by the irresistible might of the sun. That is to 
say, we impute to the cause a certain coercive force 
which, acting upon some weaker body, constrains 
it, as it were in the sheer arrogance of power, 
to the production of the effect. 

But the record of the causal event is scarcely 
so simple. Abstracting from the fact that the 
universal system is the permanent condition of all 
causation, the cause as agent is powerless to 
produce its effect without the co-operation of the 
reagent or of the material upon which it acts. 
Even in merely mechanical action the body which 
seems to be overborne is represented to the full 
extent of its nature and power. Action and 
reaction are equal. The effect is in all physical 
events the resultant of the action of agent and 
reagent both, and the stress of our assumption 
that the effect must perforce follow its cause is 
simply the strength of our conviction that things 
will act invariably according to their nature. 
The necessity is in our thought. What we see 



i9° Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

is uniformity of action tinder uniformity of con- 
ditions : the methods of nature are constant. With- 
out this constancy, in fact, there were neither 
nature nor the thought of nature; and we think 
an effect of a certain kind must follow a cause of 
a certain kind, when the conditions are the same, 
because that is what invariably happens. The 
necessity imposed upon our thought by the nature 
of things we in turn impute to nature. The 
effect appears as the triumph of a tyrannous and 
irresistible cause. 1 

The consequence of this habit of our thought is 
to divest every natural object of its particular 
nature and force. Overlooking the power im- 
manent in each several thing, and referring 
it always to some external or antecedent thing, 

1 Metaphysical or philosophical necessity is nothing dif- 
ferent from . . . certainty. — Jonathan Edwards: The Will, 
part i, sec. 3. 

What is our idea of necessity, when we say that two objects 
are necessarily connected together? . . . After a frequent 
repetition, I find, that upon the appearance of one of the 
objects, the mind is determin'd by custom to consider its 
usual attendant, and to consider it in a stronger light 
upon account of its relation to the first object. 'T is this 
impression, then, or determination, which affords me the idea 
of necessity. — Hume: A Treatise 0} Human Nature, book 
i., part iii., sec. xiv. 

All that, strictly speaking, we know of the material universe 
is this succession of events. . . . The principle or virtue by 
which one event is conjoined to another we never see. — 
William Godwin: Enquiry concerning Political Justice, vol. i., 
p. 367. (London, 1796.) 



Responsibility and Freedom 191 

we virtually deny that power anywhere is, while 
affirming that it is always produced. Coming 
from everywhere, we seem to say, it is yet resident 
nowhere. 

There must be some misunderstanding here. 
Every element or object is what it is in virtue 
of its constitution as an origin of force reacting 
to all impinging force, and whatever the relations 
into which it enters, through constructive or 
destructive change, it acts in accordance with 
this constitution. It were as legitimate therefore 
to maintain that its action, being the spontaneous 
expression of its nature, is always free, as to insist 
that the power in presence of which it thus ex- 
presses its nature necessitates or controls its 
action. Take a case in illustration. We find 
enumerated among the properties of water that 
it solidifies, under ordinary pressure, at zero, 
Centigrade, and boils at one hundred degrees; 
that it is neither acid nor alkaline in its action 
on vegetable colours; that it is a poor conductor 
of heat. These and other properties constitute 
its nature. But how shall it arrive at the ex- 
pression of this nature? How may it exhibit 
its properties, or even as water exist? Clearly 
only in the presence of conditions. Hence the 
presence of conditions, including what we call 
the cause, may as fitly be conceived to offer the 
opportunity for action as to impose the necessity 
for action. We may say, indifferently, that at 



19 2 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

zero, Centigrade, water will freeze, or that at zero, 
Centigrade, water must freeze ; we may regard the 
transformation as a spontaneous expression of 
the nature of water, or we may regard it as neces- 
sitated by a fall in the temperature of the air. 
The fact is in either case the same. The difference 
is merely a difference in our attitude towards 
the fact. 

In the inorganic world then, we may say, 
the concept of necessity and the concept of freedom 
coalesce. But we learn from this discussion that 
the concept of freedom is relative to our idea of 
the nature of the thing whose freedom is in ques- 
tion. And we have so little to say, in general, 
of the freedom of things inorganic for the reason 
that the thing and its nature are in our minds so 
completely identified that the question whether 
the thing will act according to its nature does not 
arise. Iron, gold, feldspar, and quartz exhibit 
everywhere their well-known properties. They 
are always what we conceive it is their nature to 
be, and nothing occurs to them to disengage the 
idea of freedom. The whole inorganic world is 
conceived as fast bound to the chain of Necessity, 
without so much as a struggle to be free. 

In the organic world, on the other hand, the 
nature or type under which the individual is 
conceived is such that the individual only in rare 
cases fully exemplifies the type. The individual 
and the type are thus disengaged in idea, and the 



Responsibility and Freedom 193 

actual organism is compared and contrasted 
with the type. It is the nature of the germ to 
expand into the tree; of the tree, to bear fruit. 
But the germ may never unfold, the tree may 
be blasted before it matures. We look at the 
organism as it were from within, and if it unfolds 
according to the conceptual form which we regard 
as its nature we look upon its growth and expan- 
sion as free. On the other hand, if from any 
external cause, that is, from any cause by us dis- 
tinguished from this inner and natural tendency, 
the organism is checked in the expression of its 
nature, or fails to become what under favouring 
influences it tends to become, we regard it as 
restrained of its freedom. 

It is in the organic world, therefore, that the 
concept of freedom first acquires practical signifi- 
cance. We assume in the organism a principle 
tending to express itself in characteristic form and 
to accomplish a definite cycle of change, and it is 
to this principle, identified with the nature of the 
organism, that the concept refers. Freedom is 
the unobstructed working of this principle; 
any impairment of the activity of this principle 
is an impairment of freedom. The plant, for 
example, which has earth, air, sunlight, and mois- 
ture in abundance expands, as we say, naturally 
or freely, and exhibits in completeness the charac- 
ters of its type. If it is parched by drought, or 
eaten by pests, or crowded by too thrifty neigh- 



194 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

bours, or otherwise fails of the opportunity which 
its full development demands, its freedom is 
abridged, or, in other words, it lives a cramped and 
"unnatural" life. 

And so in respect of all organised being. The 
individual is regarded as the seat of a distinctive 
principle which constitutes its proper nature, 
and which it tends as it develops to exemplify- 
in full character and detail. And the freedom 
of the individual is freedom or opportunity to 
follow this tendency unthwarted. 

Meantime, whatever complexity we find in the 
nature of the organism, we discover, as we have 
already had occasion to say, no break in the 
network of causes which binds the individual 
system to the system of nature in general. Action 
and reaction are as constant and uniform here, 
so far as we can see, as in the inorganic world. 
And yet there is nothing in this causal activity 
which annuls the possibility of freedom as we have 
defined it. Causation is, in fact, implied in 
such freedom. Without the action and reaction 
which bind the organism in causal relations with 
the general system of nature the organism would 
have no opportunity to exhibit or unfold its in- 
dividual nature, or, in other words, to assert 
its freedom. 1 

• En dehors de toute consideration morale, la liberte* dont 
la pratique a besoin est compatible avec le d^terminisme : 
elle n'est qu'une forme supeYieure de d£terminisme conscient. 
— A. Fouillee: Revue Philosophique, May, 1895, p. 462. 



Responsibility and Freedom 195 

The opposition between causation and freedom 
thus disappears. It is only when freedom is 
conceived in a different and, as we must insist, 
an illicit sense, namely, as affirmed of the action of 
a causeless cause, that any incompatibility is seen. 
Yet this illicit use of the term is not without some 
show of support in the facts. In conscious sys- 
tems, that is, on the higher levels of organic ac- 
tivity, the action of the environment may undergo 
in the organism a metamorphosis so complete 
that its causal efficacy is in great part veiled 
from our observation. And the metamorphosis 
is the more complete the nearer we approach 
the human type. About the doings of man, in 
fact, our ignorance leaves a breadth of obscure or 
unseen activity so great that it seems to exempt 
his will from causal influence, and lends to his 
volitional acts the appearance of complete spon- 
taneity. 1 Man comes and goes, lies down and 
rises up, as seems good to him. He moves at the 
suggestion of his own ideas, which occur with- 
out apparent excitation from without; and yet, 
while the acts which they prompt cannot be 
traced to the system of nature as effect* they enter 
into the system of nature so effectively as cause 



1 Ex his enim sequitur . . . quod homines se liberos 
esse opinentur, quandoquidem suarum volitionum suique 
appetitus sunt conscii, et de causis, a quibus disponuntur ad 
appetendum et volendum, quia earum sunt ignari, ne per 
somnium cogitant. — Spinoza: Ethices, parsi., prop, xxxvi., ap. 



196 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

that the will is sometimes assumed to be the 
original type of a cause. There is in human 
volition what thus appears to be an absolute 
initiative: the will seems to be a causeless cause. 
And this apparent initiative is identified with 
our freedom. 1 

We have in this interpretation of human action 
the antithesis of what we found in the interpreta- 
tion of the activities of the inorganic world. There 
we saw the external view prevailing to the exclusion 
of freedom. Here we find the internal view, out 
of which the concept of freedom arises, occupying 
the thought so completely that it excludes the 
concept of causation, with the necessity which it is 
supposed to involve, as inapplicable to the genesis 
of the will. But the break in the continuity of 
the causal sequence is merely the presumption 
of our ignorance. No actual break has ever been 
shown, and our practice implies that there is no 
break. We assume in our penal and educational 
institutions, for example, that volitional action 
may be modified by discipline and punishment, 
and the whole procedure of civilised communities 
rests on the assumption that volition, as a psy- 

1 The metaphysical theory of free-will, as held by phi- 
losophers (for the practical feeling of it, common in a greater 
or less degree to all mankind, is in no way inconsistent with 
the contrary theory), was invented because the supposed 
alternative of admitting human actions to be necessary, was 
deemed. inconsistent with every one's instinctive conscious- 
ness — J. S. Mill: Logic, book vi., chap. ii. 



Responsibility and Freedom 197 

cho-physical fact, is subject to causal influence. 
Where there appears to be a break we simply 
follow our clue as far as it leads us, and lose 
it. There are gaps indeed in our knowledge of 
the connection of merely physical events, but as 
each accession to our knowledge of physical nature 
reduces the number of such gaps we have come 
to infer the causal sequence even where we cannot 
trace it. And as we have reason to believe that 
psychical changes are related, through the cor- 
poreal system, with the general system of nature, 
the conclusion seems inevitable that nature, organic 
or inorganic, brutish or human, is everywhere 
what we find her to be wherever we can follow 
her, a body of unbroken tissue, all of one piece. 
We hold then that human volitional action 
relates backwards as well as forwards in the 
causal system. It is consequent as well as 
antecedent. And yet there is a germ of truth 
in this doctrine Of the human initiative which 
we ought not to miss. The activity of nature 
implies interacting elements, and in that universal 
interaction which constitutes the life of nature 
each element, as we have said, must be regarded 
as a seat or origin of power. Such original power 
we must recognise in the psycho -physical activity 
of man. We cannot assume, of course, that human 
power is original in the sense that it is an absolute 
addition to the universal sources of power. We 
must conceive it as coming with the elements of 



i9 8 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

which human nature is compounded. But while it 
may be regarded as co-ordinate with all the 
manifestations of power in nature, it has in its 
human investment a distinctively human initiative 
and character, and gives new direction, depending 
on its human quality, to the forces on which it 
reacts. It is in this sense an original factor in the 
processes of nature's continuous creation. 

And it is as such a causal factor that human 
nature manifests its freedom. Indeed it could 
neither act nor assert its freedom, which is free- 
dom to act, unless it were in causal relations with 
the system of nature. All that we need, then, 
to resolve the antithesis between freedom and 
causation is a just conception of freedom. Free- 
dom, as we have said, presupposes causation, 
and appears wherever the distinctive nature of 
the individual appears. There is no organism in 
fact which does not transmute impinging force 
in its own sense and so assert its nature and 
its freedom. Men do not gather grapes of thorns 
or figs of thistles, and the wolf does not surprise 
us with the characters of the lamb. Each acts 
as it is its nature to act. And the more com- 
plex or highly developed this nature, the more 
potent it is in giving direction to the reactions 
of which it is the seat, and the more significant 
is the question of freedom. Its potence is greatest 
therefore in the conscious activity of man. And 
there too freedom is most apparent. 



CHAPTER XX 

HUMAN FREEDOM RELATED TO THE EXECUTION OF 
THE VOLITIONAL IDEA 

WE have seen that the external or exciting 
causes to which human nature reacts un- 
dergo in the human system a process of elabora- 
tion so complex and recondite that their part 
in volitional action cannot always be traced. But 
we cannot because of this obscurity deny the 
existence of such causes. We must allow, unless 
we are prepared to isolate the system, that they 
are essential to the maintenance of the conscious 
organism in its functional life. They are the 
threads by which its tissue, so to speak, is inter- 
laced with the system of nature in general. 

But the human system is conscious only in part. 
Its conscious activity is bound up with the ac- 
tivity of a physical system which performs certain 
functions without conscious direction, and may 
be treated as having a nature of its own, tend- 
ing only to its own conservation and thus con- 
stituting an object of study by itself. The 
physiologist and the physician may properly 
consider whether this system, the body, is freely 
developing its nature; whether, in other words, 

199 



200 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

it is in a state of health. That is a question of 
pathology or of hygiene. 

But the ethical student is directly concerned 
only with the conscious activity of man, and, 
specifically, with the field of volitional action. We 
must admit, of course, that the relation between 
the two systems, the physical and the psychical, 
is extremely close. In fact they are set apart 
only for the purpose of special study, and constitute 
together but a single system, the state of the body 
being sometimes quite obviously represented in the 
direction of the will. The composition of the 
blood, the flow of the secretions, the relation of 
waste to nutrition, are all, as they are normal or 
abnormal, reflected in the tone of our conscious 
states, and through the relation of the accom- 
panying sensations to the current of our thoughts 
may influence volitional action. But physical 
conditions arrest our attention only when they are 
morbid, and then we seek medical advice. The 
ethical student has enough to engage his attention 
when the physical conditions may be assumed to 
be normal. 

The field of ethical inquiry, then, is the will 
rather than the physical basis of the will. Human 
nature, for us, is conscious human nature seeking 
satisfaction in the realisation of ends which it has 
consciously chosen and demanding freedom to 
pursue its ends. But in referring to the will we 
do not intend that it shall be regarded as a separ- 



Freedom and the Volitional Idea 201 

able entity or power, having a distinguishable 
nature within the nature of the individual con- 
scious subject. Apart from this subject it has 
neither nature nor freedom of its own. The will 
is, in other words, the individual conscious sub- 
ject, the man, addressing himself to action, and 
the freedom of the will is the freedom of the man 
to advance to his ends or to execute his volitional 
idea. 1 What we call the mandate of the will 
is in fact nothing but this idea, inhibiting within 
the subject all influences or ideas incompatible 
with itself, and advancing by a constitutional law 
to its own accomplishment. And for our purpose, 
the volitional idea embodies, for the time being, 
the "nature" of the man. 

For us, then, the will is the man. And, bearing 
in mind that it is the freedom of the man as willing 
and not of any hypostatised entity called Will 
that is in question, let us look at some of the cases 
as they confront us in practice. Under what 

» To talk of liberty or the contrary as belonging to the 
very will itself is not to speak good sense. For the will itself 
is not an agent that has a will. . . . That which has the 
power of volition or choice is the man or the soul. — Jonathan 
Edwards: The Will, part i, sec. v. 

Liberty belongs not to the will . . . but to the agent 
or man. — Locke: Human Understanding, book 2, chap. xxi. t 
sec. 20-21. 

But in all instances, the proper subject, that which acts 
or is acted on, is not the faculty or the organ, but the Unitary 
Ego. This Ego knows; the Ego wills; the Ego feels. — James 
Martineau: Types of Ethical Theory, vol. ii., p. 13. 



202 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

conditions may we say that the will is free, and 
under what conditions is its freedom impaired ? 

Where the restraint is simply physical the case 
presents no difficulty. A man bound hand and 
foot or shut up within four walls has lost his free- 
dom. And he regains his freedom, that is, the 
will to move, or to execute any act which such 
restraint makes impossible, is free when his 
fetters are struck off or the prison door is opened. 
Here there is nothing to suggest any distinction 
of the will from the man. When the body, which is 
the immediate instrument of volition, is restrained 
the will too, however we view it, is restrained: 
it cannot advance to its ends; and in ordinary 
parlance it would be said, as we also should say, 
the man cannot have his will. 1 

» By "liberty " is understood, according to the proper signi- 
fication of the word, the absence of external impediments: 
which impediments may oft take away part of a man's power 
to do what he would. — Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan, chap. xiv. 

In this, then, consists freedom, viz., in our being able to 
act or not to act, according as we shall choose or will. — Locke: 
Human Understanding, book ii., chap, xxi., sec. 27. 

The plain and obvious meaning of the words Freedom and 
Liberty, in common speech, is power, opportunity, or advan- 
tage, that any one has, to do as he pleases. Or in other words, 
his being free from hindrance or impediment in the way of 
doing or conducting in any respect as he wills. — Edwards: 
The Will, sec. v. 

By liberty, then, we can only mean a power of acting or 
not acting according to the determinations of the will; that is, 
if we choose to remain at rest, we may; if we choose to move, 
we also may. Now this hypothetical liberty is universally 



Freedom and the Volitional Idea 203 

So far with respect to physical restraint. But 
even where there is no physical restraint, but 
merely the dread of it, the coercion is scarcely 
distinguished in practice from that which is in 
fact physical. So also when through fear of pain 
or the dread of death a man is driven, at the point 
of the pistol for instance, to give up his purse or 
open a safe. The fear of death is of course 
psychical, as is also the fear of pain and even the 
sense of pain. But the mental recoil from the 
idea of pain or restraint or death is in such close 
relations with the instinctive or reflex movements 
of the body that the coercion where such dread 
is inspired is conceived as physical. At any rate 
it leaves the actions of the man only in a limited 
sense under volitional control. * There is a certain 
range of conscious action, varying in breadth from 
man to man, which is so completely organised 
in accord with the physical principle of self- 
conservation that it is practically outside of the 
field of volitional choice. At the muzzle of a gun 
the average man has no will. That is to say, 

allowed to belong to every one who is not a prisoner and in 
chains. — David Hume: Inquiry concerning Human Under- 
standing, sec. viii. 

In speaking of agents as free, it is intended to declare them 
free from compulsion or constraint by extraneous force, 
and free for actions resulting from their own nature and 
constitution. — Shadworth H. Hodgson: Metaphysics of Ex- 
perience, vol. iv., book iii., chap, vi., p. 125. 

1 Aristotle: Eth. Nic, iii., i., 3. 



204 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

he abandons his own volitional ends to satisfy 
those of another. He is not free. 

In case of moral restraint, however, the situation 
is not so clear. Here the restraining influence is 
the idea not of physical restrictions or pains but 
of the attitude of another mind. The boy who 
shrinks from the censure of his teacher or the 
jeers of his companions, the duellist who fights 
lest he should be called a coward, the writer or 
speaker who shifts his position under the criticism 
of his public, yields to this sort of restraint. In 
some cases, however, such influence ceases to be 
regarded as coercive. It may convince or per- 
suade, that is, the will may be changed, or adopt a 
new end, as the result of criticism or comment. 
And if the will itself is changed, if the man adopts 
a new volitional idea, his freedom in willing must 
be judged as in relation to the end which he now 
seeks and which now represents his nature. 

But what do we mean by "adopting" an end? 
And why, when pain or the dread of pain, physical 
or moral, deflects the will, should we not assume 
that the will here also adopts a new end, namely, 
to avoid the pain, and freely follows this end ? 

The concept of freedom seems to be properly 
applicable to the willing subject or the ego only 
as the ego advances unimpeded to ends in which 
it seeks positive satisfaction. Pain prompts to 
nothing but measures for relief from pain, and 
the satisfaction afforded by such relief is pleasant 



Freedom and the Volitional Idea 205 

only by comparison with the pain. For distinc- 
tion's sake we may call this negative satisfaction. 
When, however, the field of choice is open the 
subject pursues such ends alone as in themselves 
or in their pursuit yield pleasure or positive 
satisfaction. Pain is thus conceived as alien to the 
will, and when pain is the incentive to action it 
is regarded as obstructing or coercing the will 5 
it distracts it from ends which the man would 
pursue in the unhampered discharge of his func- 
tions, which alone yields positive satisfaction. 
Pain implies, in fact, an obstruction of function. 
A volitional end changed by the dread of pain, 
which dread is in itself painful, is thus a thwarted 
end, and indicates, so far as it goes, that violence 
is done to the nature of the man. And he is, 
so far, restrained of his freedom. Where the 
man on the other hand, is convinced or per- 
suaded, he pursues a new end, that is, seeks a 
new form of positive satisfaction, and thus makes 
the new end his own. Hence we say that he 
"adopts" the new end. In fact we do not 
consider that he is convinced or persuaded until 
he is satisfied to take the new attitude, or sees in 
the pursuit of the new end an opportunity for 
activities in which he takes pleasure. And so 
long as the new volitional impulse is unimpeded 
in its course to the new object he is free. 

For the purposes of this discussion, then, we 
conceive that the nature of the ego is expressed 



206 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

in the free activity of the will, or in the unim- 
peded advance from the volitional idea to some 
end or object which the ego finds satisfaction or 
pleasure in pursuing. It is not to be confounded, 
therefore, with the supposed general character or 
average tendency of the will. Nor can we, in this 
inquiry, identify it with what we call the man's 
better nature. 1 Freedom of the will is freedom 
to act. We might say that it is freedom to choose, 
but restriction of choice means only that in cer- 
tain cases the man is not free to act as he will. 2 
And for the purpose of determining whether the 
willing subject is or is not free the will must be 
defined by its actual end or aim as expressed in the 
volitional idea. The will, in relation to freedom, 
is the will to advance to a certain end. 3 The end 
may be near or remote, simple or complex | 
its attainment may involve the discharge of great 

1 It is clear that if we say that a man is a "free" agent 
in so far as he acts rationally, we cannot also say — in the 
same sense — that it is by his own "free" choice that he acts 
irrationally, when he does so act. — H. Sidgwick: Methods of 
Ethics, book i., chap, v., sec. i. 

2 Freiheit ist die Fahigkeit eines Wesens durch selbst- 
bewusste Motive unmittelbar in seinen Handlungen bestimmt 
zu werden. . . . Nicht dass eine Wahl stattfindet, sondern 
dass die Wahl selbst eine freie sei, erscheint uns als das wahre 
Kennzeichen einer freien Handlung. — W. Wundt: Ethik: 
dritter abschn., erstes cap., 3, a, S. 397-398. 

3 Sans doute, quand nous essayons de nous representer 
le vouloir, nous n'y parvenons qu'en l'incorporant dans un 
objet, — desir de telle chose, vouloir de telle mouvement. — A. 
Fouillee: Rev. Philos., June, 1892, p. 584. 



Freedom and the Volitional Idea 207 

muscular energy, with violent incursion into the 
world of things, or it may involve no more than the 
play of the features or the utterance of a word. 
But the will, whatever its end, is the will to do; 
and the end, however vague, must be so far dis- 
tinguished that it may determine the conscious 
activity in one direction rather than in another. 
To the will in general, or to the will as the 
mere abstract possibility of willing, which, hypo- 
statised as the Will, has imported so much con- 
fusion into ethical inquiry, the question of freedom 
is irrelevant. 1 Freedom, we repeat, applies to 
the will only as the man willing addresses himself 
to the attainment of some end so far defined as to 
influence his conduct. And if the man, seeking 
satisfaction in an end which he wills, or making 
the end his own, may without let or hindrance 
accomplish his will, he is in his willing free; 
so far as he is obstructed in the attainment of 
his end, he is restrained of his freedom. 

It is perhaps important to note, further, that 
volition is not to be conceived as a process in vacuo. 
As we have said, the social environment is always 
presupposed. And the pressure of social opinion 
is felt in advance of any particular determination 
of the will. A body of traditions, tendencies, 
and judgments presses upon the individual before 
he addresses himself to the achievement of any 

1 To will in general is impossible. — F. H. Bradley: Ethical 
Studies, p. 139. (Anast. reprint.) 



208 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

given end. And this pressure is constant. How, 
then, can the will of the social unit, formed under 
this constant pressure, be in any sense free? 
We can only answer that as a certain atmospheric 
pressure is essential to the proper aeration and 
circulation of the blood, so a certain weight of 
social opinion is necessary to the complete expres- 
sion of the nature of the individual, that is, to the 
freest volitional action. The life of the ego is, in 
fact, a continuous reaction to this pressure, which, 
as we have seen, affects the form of the whole 
conscious life. 

It should be added also that the acts and ends 
of life are so closely interwoven, and so much of 
the conduct of life is determined by the idea of 
remote and comprehensive ends, that neither the 
intent nor the act of the moment can be regarded 
as complete in itself. And there lies within our- 
selves an undiscovered realm from which emerge 
things as strange to us as are the contents of an- 
other mind. It is only in part, therefore, that we 
understand our volitions or our freedom. But the 
inquiry into the freedom of the will is, as we 
have said, a practical inquiry; and if we cannot 
always determine precisely what we will, or the 
freedom we may enjoy in the execution of our will, 
this does not affect the general position here 
taken. We are free only in so far as, with the 
will set to an object, we have way and means to 
do what we will. 



CHAPTER XXI 

MORAL FREEDOM AND MORAL RESPONSIBILITY 

THE question of freedom arises, as we have 
seen, only upon the appearance of a volition 
or the will to act. It implies nothing as to the 
anterior development of this will: it takes for 
granted a will now existent and seeking satisfac- 
tion in its object. And there must be an object. 
A man does not assume the volitional attitude, 
or, in other words, he has no will, until he has 
settled upon some end or idea which by some act 
or course of action he undertakes to realise. 

This idea is the intellectual element in volition. 
But the idea, we have seen, need not be defined 
with particularity or precision in order to become 
an object in volition. One's conception of the 
right in general, for instance, may constitute 
such an object; for though the right in general 
is an abstract or symbol of an indefinite number 
of acts, for each of which there must be a distinct 
intendment of the will, it is also something more 
than a mere abstract. It means, to the penitent, 
for example, the forsaking of certain namable 
companions, the surrender of certain darling 
14 209 



210 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

vices. It is thus an object at which the willing 
subject can aim. Otherwise nothing were willed: 
there were no determination to reform. And not 
until this object is so far defined as to give new 
direction to the will can the question arise whether 
the will to do right is or is not free. Freedom 
relates, in other words, to the execution, not to the 
formation, of the will. Up to the point where 
the man addresses himself to act upon his idea 
the idea which may become volitional is not yet 
will. The will is still in the making. The idea 
becomes will when, through its cerebral concomi- 
tants, it initiates the motor processes which issue 
in movements appropriate for the realisation of 
the idea. 1 And, as we have said, the will is free 
when, being identified with the self, or directed 
to an end in which the self seeks satisfaction, it 
discharges itself unimpeded in the act or acts to 
which the motor system is adjusted by the voli- 
tional idea. An end relatively remote may require 
a number of such adjustments, at each of which 
the question of freedom may arise afresh. The 
question must then be settled at each such adjust- 
ment. And it may appear that the willing subject 
is free with reference only to certain of its intend- 
ments, and not free with reference to its end as a 

1 In "deliberation" the last appetite or aversion, imme- 
diately adhering to the action, or to the omission thereof, 
is that we call the ' ' will" ; the act, not the faculty, of ' ' willing. ' ' 
Hobbes: Leviathan, chap. vi. 



Moral Responsibility 



211 



whole. It remains true, however, that as a 
practical question freedom relates to the execution, 
not to the formation, of the volitional idea. 

What shall we say, then, of the doctrine of man's 
moral freedom ? Simply that it is true. Inasmuch 
as in all questions of moral obligation the course 
of the will to its object, the right action, is assumed 
to be open, the fact of man's moral freedom, in 
the sense that he may do right if he will, cannot 
be disputed. That we must assume this course to 
be open is clear, for otherwise the obligation would 
not lie. The right act is always an act which, as- 
suming that the will to do right is present, is within 
the scope, or may be brought within the scope, of 
the man's capacity to perform. The act thus de- 
pends upon the man's will alone. If he has the 
will to do the act, the act may be done, other- 
wise he would be under no obligation to do it. 

And this freedom from impediments external 
to the will is all that is properly implied in the 
assertion of moral freedom as a ground of moral 
responsibility. If the way is open, if means and 
opportunity for the execution of the will are 
offered and nothing but the will is wanting, 
the fault lies of course in the derelict himself. 
The responsibility for failing to do right is then 
fixed. That is to say, the will or volitional dis- 
position of the man becomes the point to which the 
usual correctives of the will may now be applied. 

But it is sometimes urged that the question of 



212 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

moral freedom and of the responsibility which it 
involves may be pushed back of the motor idea 
essential to volition. We have insisted that the 
will, that is the man, is free if when willing he may 
do as he wills. And he is morally responsible be- 
cause, when he is willing to do right, there can 
be nothing foreign to his will to prevent him 
from doing any act to which he is morally obliged. 
But it is asserted, as bearing on the question of re- 
sponsibility, that a prior question may be raised. 
We are asked, not whether the man is free to do 
as he wills, but whether he is free in the sense 
that he can will to will, whether, in other words, 
a volition can be the object of a volition. 1 

The question is psychological rather than 
practical or moral. Moral responsibility is re- 
sponsibility for conduct, that is, for one's out- 
ward bearing or actions, rather than for the 
mental states which do not issue in action. Of 
course the trend of the thoughts, since thought 
tends to act itself out, cannot be ignored by the 
individual himself or his monitor. But it is only 
the overt act that society can deal with when it is 
awarding punishment or distributing censure; and 

1 Dem empirischen BegrifE der Freheit heisst es: "frei 
bin Ich wenn Ich thun was Ich will": und durch das "was 
Ich will " ist da schon die Freiheit entschieden. Jetzt aber, 
da wir nach der Freiheit des Wollens selbst fragen, wiirde 
demgemass diese Frage sich so stellen: "kannst du auch 
wollen was du willst?" — Arthur Schopenhauer: Preisschrift 
uber die Freiheit des Willens, i., i, c. 



Moral Responsibility 213 

it censures or punishes the individual as it finds 
him, that is, as a man undissected and whole. 
But inasmuch as freedom and responsibility 
seem to go with the will, whatever its object, it 
is pertinent to ask whether the will to will is in- 
deed a true willing. We should say that it is not. 
Psychologically, perhaps, the will to will might 
with some straining be brought under the category 
of volition. We should then have a volitional 
idea the content of which is not the performance 
of any external act, but the formation of another 
volitional idea; and the realisation of the first 
idea would be the formation of the second. Is a 
man free to execute this sort of volition? We can 
only answer that sometimes he is and sometimes 
he is not. Instincts which were quiescent in the 
first stage of the process, the so-called will to will, 
may appear later in unsuspected strength and 
prevent the formation of the will to act. But 
the process is not unfamiliar. It is known in 
common experience as making a resolution. And 
whether a man can or cannot carry out a given 
resolution, or convert it, when the time for action 
comes, into the will to act, is a question which per- 
haps few, and very likely not even the man him- 
self, would undertake to answer. 1 If he cannot, 

1 We must therefore accept the conclusion that each such 
resolve has only a limited effect: and that we cannot know 
when making it how far this effect will exhibit itself in the 
performance of the act resolved upon. — H. Sidgwick: Methods 
of Ethics, book i., chap, v., sec. 5. 



214 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

should we then say that his freedom in willing 
is restricted? That would be to use the words 
out of their ordinary sense, and to confound the 
meaning of two terms, resolution and volition, 
which we have good practical reasons for keeping 
distinct. Ordinarily we do not speak of a man 
either as willing or as free except in relation to 
his acts. Nor do we hold him responsible in merely 
resolving or willing to will. Freedom and re- 
sponsibility are practical concepts. They do not 
apply to an anatomised subject, or to some merely 
psychological phase in the formation of the will to 
act. It is in what the man does as a man that we 
deem him free or restrained of his freedom, and it 
is the man as affecting other men that we hold 
responsible. In other words, it is conduct that 
we judge, punish, and reward. 

But the confusion of thought which appears in 
the attempt to apply the concept of freedom to 
the genesis rather than to the expression of the will 
appears in other forms. The study of the natural 
sciences, now so generally pursued, disposes the 
student to apply the concepts of his science to 
every domain, even to the conscious life of man. 
Hence, if he is caught by the fallacy which lurks 
in the word "necessity," he may be heard to argue 
that moral freedom, and indeed all freedom, 
is an illusion. Even the student of sociology, 
weighing the influence of heredity, education, asso- 
ciation, and other abstractions to which we assign 



Moral Responsibility 215 

the role of psychical "forces," may conclude that 
certain deviations from the right are inevitable. 
How then, he may ask, shall a man be held re- 
sponsible if he does wrong? And what is punish- 
ment but an added wrong? 

Questions like these, which have found their 
way into literature and have given rise to much 
sentimental moralising, present no serious diffi- 
culty under the theory of causation and freedom 
which we have defended. In effect they have 
been answered already. Responsibility follows 
freedom, and neither is incompatible with causa- 
tion viewed as a linear series of changes in that uni- 
versal action and reaction of original forces which 
constitutes the system of nature. And responsi- 
bility, like freedom, assumes the will to act, by 
whatever means generated, as already given. The 
ordinary plea in evasion of responsibility is an 
averment that the act complained of was not the 
act of the will. Such a plea, when its averment 
is established, must be recognised as valid. But 
if the offender should allege, not that he did not 
will the offensive act, but that he in fact did will it, 
pleading however that he could not help but will 
it, we should have a quite different plea. The 
plea in the one case is that the man is not responsi- 
ble for his act, on grounds which are in practice 
recognised as sufficient, and which leave the com- 
mon doctrine of responsibility unimpaired. The 
plea in the other case is that the man is not respon- 



216 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

sible for his will, or volitional idea, and would, if 
by such a plea punishment could be evaded, empty 
the term responsibility of all content. And 
these two pleas are confounded as one. It is 
assumed as self-evident that if a man is not respon- 
sible for the constitution which is practically ef- 
fective through his will, he is not responsible for 
the acts of his will. 

The assumption is unfounded, and rests upon a 
mistaken conception of the meaning of responsi- 
bility. In his efforts to ameliorate his social con- 
dition man must make a beginning somewhere: 
something must be taken as established. Where 
responsibility is imputed and punishment is in- 
flicted it is the will to work social harm which is 
taken as the point of departure. We are bound, 
of course, in the economy of effort, to trace evil to 
its source, and, if possible, to dam up the source. 
But we cannot go back indefinitely. The chain 
of causation is infinite, 1 and if the attempt to fix 
responsibility should require us to refer each cause 
to an ulterior cause, in search of an ultimate cause, 
the result would be to paralyse effort in advance 
and strip the word responsibility of meaning. 
In practice the ultimate cause must be one which 
is to some extent under our control, or reacts to our 

1 Jede, auch die einfachste Willenshandlung ist . . . 
Endglied einer unendlichen Reihe, von der uns stets nur 
einige der letzten Glieder gegeben sind. — W. Wundt: Ethik, 
dritter abschn., erstes cap., i, c., S. 377. 



Moral Responsibility 217 

activity ; and the ultimate cause sought for in any 
investigation intended to fix responsibility is the 
will. With the will something may be done. 
That we have learned from experience. Where 
there is question of responsibility, therefore, the 
inquiry begins with the evil or anti-social act, 
and harks back to the will to act. There we 
touch a point at which remedies may be applied. 
And there, save so far as is necessary to determine 
the severity of the punishment or the nature of the 
remedy, the inquiry ends. 

The fact, therefore, that the volitional act is 
involved in causal or systematic relations with 
society and the world is so far from absolving the 
agent from responsibility for his act that such 
relations are presupposed when punishment is 
inflicted. The disorder in the will, however 
caused, is a present fact, and the remedy proposed 
is one that has been found, in its general results, 
more or less effective. And were it not absurd 
to insist that a remedy, or a new causal influence, 
may not be applied for the reason, indeed, that the 
disorder itself is not uncaused! The physician 
does not relax his efforts in the abatement, say, 
of malarial fever, because the conditions of its 
presence may be traced to the incidents of remote 
geologic time. His art requires no more than that 
he shall be sure of his diagnosis and of the fitness of 
his remedies. And this is all that is required in 
punitive treatment or social therapeutics. 



218 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

We conclude, then, that there is nothing in 
the recognition of the volitional act as effect 
which resolves away the freedom of the agent or 
cuts away the ground of responsibility. The 
agent is free if he can consummate the volitional 
act, that is, if he can have his will; and if he 
knowingly wills a harmful act he is responsible 
for the harm. Punishment is a general remedy 
for the correction of the injurious will. That 
volition as a psycho-physical fact is caused, or has 
systematic antecedents, is doubtless true, but is 
here immaterial. The purpose of punishment is 
in a general sense to heal, and the will, like the 
wilding fruit, may be in systematic relations with 
the universal activity and yet be amenable to 
treatment. In fact, it must be causally related 
or we could not deal with it at all. 



SECTION VI 

Relation of Morality to Happiness 
CHAPTER XXII 

general considerations 

WE have seen that among the fundamental 
principles of our nature is a demand for 
the maximum satisfaction attainable through 
functional activity in its various forms, and 
particularly through such activity as is directed 
to volitional ends. This demand, as applied to any 
particular function, we regard as the elemental 
principle of conscious choice. And the principle 
becomes rational when it is consistently applied, 
that is, when all demands are harmonised and 
organised as a general demand for such functional 
life as will yield on the whole the completest 
satisfaction attainable under the conditions of 
life. 

We have seen, further, that social organisation 
is indispensable as a means of complying with this 
rationalised demand. In other words, society 
is necessary, not only for the satisfaction of the 

social impulse, but as alone offering stimulus and 

219 



220 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

opportunity for human development from the 
state of the brute to that ideal state which is the 
progressive goal of human hopes. 

And we have seen, finally, that the moral laws 
stand as elementary conditions of social organisa- 
tion, conditions with which the individual must 
comply in order to fit himself for the associative 
life, upon which human progress, general and 
individual, depends. 

Morality is thus a fundamental condition of 
human development, and of such increase in the 
pleasure or satisfaction attainable in life as comes 
with such development, in the sweetening of social 
intercourse, the strengthening of social ties, and 
a general increase in functional power. 

In assigning to morality this pre-eminent position 
as a condition of human happiness we do not mean 
to be understood, however, as maintaining that 
morality is the sufficient condition of pleasure in 
general. This would be to fly in the face of 
experience. Nor could we with consistency hold 
to such a view. Recognising that feeling depends 
on function, we must allow that pleasure of any 
particular kind is attainable only through the spe- 
cific functional activity by which it is produced. 
No matter how scrupulously we comply with the 
moral prescription in all that we do, we must miss 
the pleasure dependent on the exercise of such 
capacities as are left to rust unused. Each end, 



Morality and Happiness 221 

with its satisfactions, must be won by appropriate 
means. One does not by one's morality, for in- 
stance, earn the pleasures attendant on the 
cultivation of science, philosophy, or the arts. 
What we insist upon here is the fact that the force 
which holds society together is moral, and that 
morality is therefore an indispensable condition 
of that general development of capacity or 
function which is possible only in the associative 
life. Morality is thus an ulterior condition even 
of such pleasure as depends on activities generally 
regarded as lying without the sphere of morals. 
But we may go farther. No human interest does 
in fact lie wholly without the sphere of morals, 
and no great work can be accomplished without 
social stimulus and appreciation, that is, without 
the inspiration of those strong social instincts which 
are the essence of moral feeling. On the other 
hand, whatever is essentially immoral, having no 
hold on the instincts which lead us forth of the 
self, is essentially personal and trivial. Morality 
is therefore something more than a remote con- 
dition of great and lasting achievement. It has 
a bearing on the very conception of really im- 
portant work, and though not the sole condition 
of success in its prosecution, which demands of 
course capacity, skill, experience, and opportunity, 
it is an essential condition of success. It has 
thus a direct relation to the worker's sense of 
satisfaction in his work. 



222 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

But we are met at this point by the general 
objection that human happiness is not in fact 
conditioned by human development. 1 Civilisa- 
tion, we are told, is marked by evils of its own, 
and brings on the whole as much wretchedness 
as happiness. And there are social critics who 
deplore our civilisation as an artifice which marks 
but the decline of the race in vital capacity 
and the essential requisites of happiness. 2 But 
even a slight acquaintance with the actual savage 
should dispel these illusions of the closet. And 
the evils which are indisputably rife in society, 
its greed, its ingenuity in crime, the brutality 
and squalor of its masses, may be traced rather to 
man's lingering wildness than to any civilising pro- 

1 Die zufriedensten Volker sind die rohen Naturvolker und 
von den Culturvolkern die ungebildeten Classen; mit steigen- 
der Bildung des Volkes wachst erfahrungsmassig seine Un- 
zufriedenheit. — Eduard von Hartmann: Phil, des Unbe- 
wussten, bd. 2, abschn. C, cap. xiii., 376. 

2 Semblable a la statue de Glaucus, que le temps, la mer 
et les orages avoient tellement defiguree qu'elle ressembloit 
moins a un dieu qu'a une bete feroce, l'ame humaine, altere"e 
au sein de la socigte" par mille causes sans cesse renaissantes, 
par l'acquisition d'une multitude de connoissances et d'erreurs, 
par les changements arrives a la constitution des corps, et 
par le choc continuel des passions, a pour ainsi dire change" 
d'apparence au point d'etre presque meconnoissable ; et 
Ton n'y retrouve plus, au lieu d'un etre agissant toujours 
par des principes certains et invariables, au lieu de cette 
celeste et majestueuse simplicity dont son auteur l'avoit 
empreinte, que le difforme contraste de la passion qui croit 
raisonner, et de l'entendement en delire. — J. J. Rousseau: 
Discours sur VOrigine de I'Inegalite (preface). 



Morality and Happiness 223 

cess to which he has been subjected. In other 
words, our civilisation is one-sided and incom- 
plete. It has not yet eradicated the barbarous 
spirit. Hence it is against the surviving barbar- 
ism, against the savagery which has merely im- 
proved its weapons or sharpened its cunning, 
rather than against the civilisation which has not 
yet extinguished the barbarous spirit, that the 
critic of " progress" should level his denunciation. 
Some maladjustment is incident, perhaps, to 
any attempt at readjustment. But the great 
defect of our civilisation, as must appear if we 
examine the question with candour and care, is 
that it has not gone far enough. It has not yet 
thoroughly socialised the will. 

Or the demurrer may take a theoretic and 
general form. The critic may contend that the 
cup of happiness never deepens; that art nor 
wit nor wisdom can ever enlarge it ; that it may be 
brimmed for the savage as for saint or savant, and 
with a pleasure as real. But this were hard to main- 
tain. The savage has little pleasure that is not 
physical, and keen as are the delights of animal 
sense they quickly pall. Pleasures less gross and 
more complex, on the other hand, pleasures due to 
the refinement of our sensibilities and the growth 
of the arts, not only have a finer edge, but are at 
the same time more pervasive and more lasting. 
And with the fuller development made possible 
by improved social conditions, and by increase in 



224 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

the means and instruments at our command, the 
forms of functional activity are multiplied. This 
multiplies, again, the modes of pleasurable feeling. 
And the value of the feeling thus made richer by a 
richer functional life is further enhanced by the 
effect of contrast and change, which quicken the 
current and deepen the channels of feeling. 

It may be urged, of course, that increased 
capacity for pleasure, due to the heightened 
sensibility of the developed organism, imports 
increased susceptibility to pain. And this is true. 

Chords that vibrate sweetest pleasure 
Thrill the deepest notes of woe. 

But the frequency of pain does not necessarily 
increase with the susceptibility to pain. Feeling 
is not perforce lacerated because it is fine. In 
fact, the conditions under which suffering arises 
are in large part conditions which as society 
progresses may be corrected or improved. In- 
stance bad physical conditions, due to our igno- 
rance or disregard of natural law, and bad social 
conditions, due to defective or ill-advised legis- 
lation. And the advance which civilisation im- 
plies is an advance for the very reason, among 
others, that it reduces the number of these in- 
jurious conditions, and thereby reduces the extent 
and mitigates the severity of human suffering. 
We cannot conceive of a developing society, in 
fact, without such meliorative change. Perceiv- 



Morality and Happiness 225 

ing no such change, we should say that society 
were going backwards or standing still. Seeing, 
then, that the amount of suffering is diminished, 
while our functional activities increase in scope, 
effectiveness, variety of mode, and consistency 
of aim, we cannot doubt that the depth, intensity, 
and sweetness of the affectional life are increased. 
That is, taking the pain with the pleasure, we 
must believe that in the course of human develop- 
ment the value of life is enhanced. We may see, 
indeed, in the human face itself as it softens 
the index of such growth. The features of the 
savage, torpid with sloth, or furrowed with the 
passions of anger, hate, and fear, bespeak an 
affectional life incomparably poorer than that 
which we read in the face of the humanised man, 
lighted with intelligence, kindliness, and hope. 

But this assumed increase in the volume, in- 
tensity, and value of our affectional life, it may 
be urged, is illusory. All conscious activity, we 
may be told, tends by repetition to sink below 
the threshold of consciousness, the borders of 
which are never widened, but shrink on the one 
hand as fast as they expand on the other. And 
there is an appearance of truth in this contention. 
In mastering, for instance, the technique of an art, 
the movements of which the student is at first 
vividly or even painfully conscious become at 
length automatic or reflex. But the fact that 
these acquired activities become reflex does not 



226 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

nullify the gain. They are added to the sub- 
conscious system which is at the basis of our 
conscious activity, and by extending this basis en- 
rich the conscious life and deepen its affectional 
tone. All the pleasures of sensibility and motion 
depend on the reflex activity of the organs of 
sense and the unconscious co-ordinations of the 
muscular system, and the manual dexterity of 
the artist, when it has become mechanical, 
gives him, by new co-ordinations, a new medium 
for self-expression. The gain thus outruns the 
loss. Compare, again, the affectional capacity of 
the child with that of the adult. The child's cup 
of feeling may be full, but it is a shallower cup. 
The borders of consciousness are widened . Human 
development, whether it dates from the childhood 
of the individual or the childhood of the race, is 
the organisation of power, and by increasing the 
functional capacity on which feeling depends 
enriches the feeling. The conditions of feeling 
require, it would seem, that a developing life 
should become for the subject a more valuable life. 
Or if there remains a lingering doubt, it must 
vanish as the eye runs down the vital scale and 
we compare such a piece of work as man with the 
oyster, for instance, or with the lowly organisms 
which the biologist places nearer the beginnings 
of animal life. 

But the rule of life would be no other than we 
have defined it even if what we call progress 



Morality and Happiness 227 

carried with it no increase in our enjoyment of life. 
The fullest satisfaction is possible only where the 
self, as it is, finds fullest expression. And as full 
self-expression, in virtue of the law that exercise 
strengthens the function, leads to self-develop- 
ment or growth, the full measure of satisfaction 
is reached only by the expanding self. In other 
words, though there were no relative gain in 
growth, life would attain its deepest meaning and 
value for the subject only in the process of growth. 
We cannot, in living up to our capacity, stand 
still. Life is movement, and the life which on any 
plane wins the completest satisfaction is, in a 
creature capable of advancement, necessarily a 
movement forwards. 

Rational life as we have denned it is thus by 
its very nature an ascent. And the common 
faith of civilised man is that life on the higher 
levels of capacity is of incomparably greater 
worth to the conscious subject than life at the 
level of the barbarian or the brute. This faith we 
share, as grounded in experience. But were the 
faith unfounded we must still go forward or miss 
the good that is within our reach. The splendour 
of the summit may be illusory, but the good to 
be gathered as we climb the slope is real. And 
it can be gathered in full measure only as we climb. 



CHAPTER XXIII 

QUERY; DOES MORALITY DEMAND OF THE INDIVI- 
DUAL UNCOMPENSATED SACRIFICE? 

IT appears that the functional development on 
which the social unit must rely to get from 
life its full value leads to and is promoted by the 
progressive movement of society as a voluntary 
organised union of independent minds. And the 
fundamental law of social union is the moral law. 
But while we may take for granted the principle 
that the social union, as social, coheres only by 
moral ties, and that the social welfare, which de- 
pends on the morality of the members of the union 
makes in general for the welfare of the individual 
member, there is some doubt whether this principle 
is in strictness universal. In other words, not all 
men are convinced that the moral law, though 
essential to the general welfare or happiness, is at 
all times a principle of happiness for all without 
exception who observe it. No exceptions to the 
supremacy of the law are allowed, as a rule, by 
those who in the name of God or of man make 
the moral demand. The claims of morality are 
usually preferred as absolute. It would seem, 
therefore, that the individual must be convinced, if 

228 



Morality and Happiness 229 

these claims are based on the relation of morality 
to happiness, that any infraction of the moral 
law on his part must impair his happiness, or why 
should he obey it ? It is true that the state, in its 
effort to correct social disorder, does not stop 
to convince. It furnishes a motive of its own. 
Looking to the general good, it ignores the possible 
hardship which its demands may work in the indi- 
vidual case, and enforces its demands by an appeal 
to fear. But the moral appeal, as such, is made 
to the individual's good feeling and good sense. 
And if the individual is urged to make the social 
aim his invariable, unreserved, and personal aim, 
it must be on the ground that the social or moral 
demand is one at which no rational creature can 
cavil. The general validity of the moral demand, 
whatever our point of view, cannot well be disputed ; 
but it is not allowed by all to be universally valid 
if morality is to be justified by its effect on the 
happiness of the moral agent alone. 1 The advo- 
cate of the doctrine that morality must be so 

» No proposition can be more palpably and egregiously 
false than the assertion that as far as this world is concerned 
it is invariably conducive to the happiness of a man to 
pursue the most virtuous career.— Wm. E. Hartpole Lecky 
History of European Morals, p. 61. (Appleton, N. Y. 1884 ) 

The attempt to establish an absolute coincidence between 
virtue and happiness is in ethics what the attempting to square 
the circle or to discover perpetual motion is in geometry and 
mechanics. I think it better frankly to abandon the hopeless 
endeavour.— Leslie Stephen : Science of Ethics, p. 430 



230 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

justified, if at all, is therefore bound to consider the 
exact scope of his doctrine. 

What then is the relation of individual happiness 
to the general welfare as conditioned by the moral 
life? Apparently the fruits of moral action may 
lag too far behind the act to be always enjoyed 
by the agent, or to compensate him for all moral 
sacrifice. One generation sows and another reaps. 
Thousands have died in defence of political 
freedom and liberty of conscience, and the freedom 
in which they could not live is ours. There may be 
a Nemesis which pursues races, nations, or com- 
munities; on the broad and continuous stage of 
history virtue may be essential to happiness, and 
vice may be the initial phase of disintegration and 
death; but this sequence of reward and requital, it 
is urged, cannot be established with certainty in 
the individual life. There the field is too narrow. 
The mills of the gods grind too slowly, and the 
play of the moral forces is on too vast a scale to 
balance each private account as it runs, and to 
render to every man in the brief span of his life 
according to his deeds. 

Can we, then, on the grounds that we have 
urged, press the moral demand as absolute ? Hap- 
piness, to be felt at all, must be felt by individuals. 
There is no such thing as a general conscious- 
ness in which the pains of one man are com- 
pensated by the joy of another. The individual 
is the conscious unit. If therefore the force of the 



Morality and Happiness 231 

moral obligation lies in the value of moral conduct 
as a means to human happiness, it would appear 
that the ultimate justification of the moral life must 
be sought in its relation to the individual con- 
sciousness of happiness, that the moral life must 
be for a given individual happier, at least in 
those aspects of life to which morality applies, 
than the immoral life. But if cases arise in which 
this justification is wanting, for life as a whole 
or in part, how can we urge the moral demand 
as binding at all times, without distinction and 
without reservation, upon all? 

It is the exceptional case, it will be observed, 
that calls for consideration now. In the main the 
individual interest, intelligently understood, coin- 
cides with the general interest, and is therefore 
conserved by obedience to the moral behest, 
which is uttered in the general interest. But 
there are apparent exceptions to this rule. And 
if such exceptions are allowed to be real how are 
they to be dealt with in accordance with the 
theory we are defending? And how far are they 
real? 



CHAPTER XXIV 

question discussed: unconscious effects of 
morality and immorality 

MUCH of our unhappiness, perhaps most of it, 
lies in the torment and unrest of conflict- 
ing desires. Nothing frets the feeling like a divided 
purpose. The harsh outer condition one may 
with good wit evade or with a good grace accept ; 
but inner disorder, the vexed, erratic, ill-organised 
will, frustrates achievement and roils all the 
sources of feeling. And the effect on the feeling 
is proportioned to the extent of the disorder. 
Even where failure is neither obvious nor com- 
plete, the corrupting action of cravings suppressed 
but unsubdued hampers that free movement of 
the mind which is the condition of its joyous ac- 
tivity. The tide of feeling breaks with the breaking 
strength and disrupted unity of the will. 

But to focus the aims of life and allay the fever 
of unrest some broad and harmonising principle 
must be in effective control of our practice. To a 
certain extent the demands of an absorbing occu- 
pation may exert this control. An active intelli- 
gence which might fritter away its energy in 
gossiping inquiries gets direction and power from 

232 



Morality and Happiness 233 

its devotion, say, to business or to politics or to a 
particular science. But a man's vocation rarely 
covers the whole breadth of his manhood. It 
warps him to its own confines, and he shrinks to 
the measure of the trader or talker or money- 
maker, or something less than a man. And there 
is no vocation which can compare for an instant 
in the breadth of its interests with the vocation 
of man as a social being, and no harmonising 
principle so effective as a constant moral purpose 
in giving strength and consistency to the activities 
of life. A moral purpose, which is not merely 
conventionally moral, strikes as deep as the social 
feeling to which the moral purpose gives direction 
and form; that is to say, it penetrates the whole 
life, even the intellectual life, which without the 
truth-seeker's sincerity and the humanist's sym- 
pathy achieves nothing which can endure. 

To whatever ends, then, the self is consecrate, 
if it is immoral, that is, if it habitually ignores 
the profounder social laws, it is so far self-destruc- 
tive: it ignores its own uses. The self unsocial 
must remain a dwarfed and mutilated self. We 
have need of our fellow-men to furnish us in their 
need and by their aid the opportunity for self- 
expression ; and we have no less need of their sym- 
pathy and recognition that we may feel the full 
force of the self which they help us to express. 
In so far, therefore, as a man by violation of social 
law weakens the sympathetic interest which make 



234 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

his life intelligible and necessary to others he 
shuts out opportunity, narrows his sphere, and 
thus violates the law of his own well-being. We 
cannot, of course, assume that there is no pleasure 
in any anti-social act. A man may derive a certain 
satisfaction from the reflection of his force or 
cunning in the fears and hatred of his kind. The 
gratification of any sense, the realisation of any 
end, is in itself a pleasurable function. But the 
pleasure of the anti-social act is mingled with 
bitterness and, having no organic relation with the 
body of wholesome and permanent satisfactions 
which are based in sympathy and social good, 
is shallow and evanescent. So imperative indeed 
is the demand of our nature for sympathetic re- 
cognition that the selfish or anti-social act is soon 
stripped of such poor satisfaction as it may 
procure. The profligate finds his cup soon 
drained. The egoist, in the very heart of society, 
wraps himself in solitude as with a shroud. 

The effect of immorality as a repression or per- 
version of the proper activity of the self is thus 
essentially morbid. And the infection cannot 
fail to reach the feeling. It must reach it, too, in- 
dependently of our recognition of its source and 
character. There can be no continuous under- 
lying happiness where so strong and pervasive an 
interest as the social interest is contravened 
or ignored. The baffled social impulse reasserts 
itself in the tone of the feeling. The sources of 



Morality and Happiness 235 

satisfaction are all embittered by a latent feeling 
of want, and the vivifying sense of expansion 
produced by the reflection of the self in the affec- 
tion or appreciation of others is replaced by a 
mocking sense of the hollo wness of all satisfactions. 
And whether the cause of this waste and want 
is misinterpreted or seen for what it is, the social 
life degenerates in function and feeling, and there 
is deterioration in the values of life. 

Mark the effect of lying, for example, in the 
consciousness of the liar. Self-expression, to 
which the self normally tends, requires that the 
self shall appear in its proper form, that feeling 
shall assume no disguise, that intelligence, seeing 
that which is, shall frankly affirm that it is. 
Veracity is, in fact, the attitude of the self in 
the act of self-expression. Hence the truth 
distorted or denied is the self in feeling and ap- 
prehension distorted or repressed. The liar, in 
act or in speech, cannot be himself, as the liar 
himself is fretfully aware. How swift the sycho- 
phant to show his true feature when thrift no 
longer follows fawning! How candid the hypo- 
crite with his own dependents! Simplicity in 
speech, sincerity in act, are of the essence of the 
conscious life, which effectually is only as it is 
expressed. Absolute candour, no doubt, is but an 
ideal. Men are our enemies as well as our friends, 
and even our friends misconstrue our frankness, so 
that the most candid of men may scarcely wear 



236 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

his heart on his sleeve. But a bluff virtue, seeing 
that insincerity is mainly the suggestion of our 
fears, scorns a too careful caution or too nice a 
prudence. The stronger character is the more 
direct. And the habit of indirection is fatal to 
that simplicity which charms us in the child, and 
in those ingenuous natures which, escaping the 
necessity or the temptation to hide the promptings 
of the soul, wear the grace of childhood in age. 

Or consider the reflex effect of arrogance, a vice 
of masterful races and men. The quality is not 
easily appraised. It represents an attitude rather 
than a range of definable acts, and may attach 
to a life which fairly satisfies the demands of a 
prescriptive morality. It may even be vaunted 
as a virtue. But the moral isolation and self- 
contraction which it entails stamp it as a vice. 
The virtues are essentially social, and by fostering 
the genial habit which makes friendly service 
instinctive expand the sphere of the self. But 
arrogance, shutting out others, shuts in the self. 
It consents to be served by men as with a tool, but 
disdains to give or to take those good offices 
which mark the spirit of man as human and 
humane. And as the self shrivels its satisfactions 
shrink. With arrest of the friendly function 
the friendly feeling decays, and its power and 
benefit are lost from the life. Though forgotten 
and undesired, they are lost. 

Or take dishonesty and the vices which, under 



Morality and Happiness 237 

cover of social relations, make prey of one's 
fellow-men. They tend to isolate the self by an 
atmosphere of distrust, and even where their 
presence is unsuspected they still tend to isolation 
by damming the current of human feeling which 
should flow forth of the self. The inward reaction 
none can evade. Treachery disqualifies the self 
for genuine social service, and a spurious service 
yields only spurious satisfaction. One may get 
by indirection, perhaps, certain things which 
one covets; abundance of lifeless good may be 
laid at one's feet ; but it is at the cost of that vital 
good which is of the spirit, the spirit which 
breathes in the social will. 

And so we might go the round of our qualities 
and their perversions. But it is needless. It is 
enough to have shown that vice, as anti-social, 
is in a being by nature social essentially morbid, 
and that the antique definition of virtue as the 
state of moral sanity or health is something more 
than a figure of speech. Perfect virtue, however, 
or complete moral sanity, is rare. Perhaps it is 
never to be found. We have our ideals. We feign 
types of a saner or a finer human nature than we 
know, and life itself offers here and there shining 
examples of particular excellence. But it is in the 
moral realm as if disease were the rule and health 
the exception, so that the character of immorality 
as disorder, irrespective of the pronouncement 
of the law, escapes us. Hence the difficulty of 



238 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

appreciating moral values. Hence the scarcely 
veiled contempt of the vicious for the self- 
sophistication of "the good," fooled by a moral 
ardour which counts no cost. But no sophistica- 
tion is so complete as that of vice. The charm of 
sense, the specious promise of the present, the 
illusive conception of a private good that shall 
not perish, constantly seduce us and as constantly 
disappoint us. It were otherwise, perhaps, if the 
effects of evil were sharp and importunate, like 
an ache in the bones. But, seen or unseen, their 
development is certain. The act must act itself 
out ; the seed must bear its fruit. 

The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices 
Make instruments to scourge us. 

Though a man should mistake evil for good, or, 
knowing his wrong, should shrewdly conceal it, 
vice must run its course, corrupting the sources 
of feeling and thus lowering the values of life. 



CHAPTER XXV 

discussion continued: conscious morality — 
conscience 

WE find, then, that the effect of immorality is 
a profound derangement in the economy 
of the conscious life. And the fact of this derange- 
ment is independent of our recognition of its pre- 
sence or of its cause : as a man wastes with paresis 
whether learned or unlearned in the structure 
of his nerves, so a morbid habit of the will affects 
the form and value of the conscious life even in 
a subject unversed in the pathology of mind. 
The tone of the infected feeling is lowered though 
the disease be misconceived as health. 

In the ordinary case, however, a man is not 
without warning of this systemic degradation. 
Conscience comes to his aid. Where conscience 
or the instinctive moral consciousness is active it 
enters its protest at the inception of the immoral 
act, and is prompt to follow with its pangs dis- 
regard of its protest ; while compliance with the 
moral demand yields a deep and enduring sense of 
satisfaction which dates from the instant of moral 
choice. As a distinct and well-recognised form 

239 



240 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

of consciousness, conscience is thus an added 
incentive to the moral life. Let us consider 
for a moment the mode of its action. 

We have treated the moral consciousness as 
arising by natural growth under the conditions 
imposed by social life. But this view, it is said, 
does not account for the sense of moral obligation 
as we feel it. The force of the moral obligation, 
it is urged, is something different from the force of 
an instinct or an inveterate habit. Our aesthetic 
judgments are for the most part instinctive, 
but we seem to be under no such stress of obliga- 
tion to seek after beauty and shun deformity as to 
eschew evil and hold fast to that which is good. 
With the sense of right there seems to be fused 
the consciousness of an inner requirement, quite 
distinct from personal choice, to pursue the right, 
so that the right would hardly be conceived as the 
right unless it carried this requirement. How 
does this peculiar sense of obligation arise? 

It may be explained in part, perhaps, as the 
effect of external pressure. Individual conduct 
is to a great extent guided by social constraint, 
rather than by independent conviction; but this 
outward pressure, persistently exerted, may never- 
theless produce a state of mind which is in practice 
tantamount to conviction, and which through 
the force of habit carries with it a sense of obliga- 
tion. In some such way we must account for the 
tenacity with which a mere custom maintains 



Morality and Happiness 241 

its hold on men's lives. The unrenective mind 
simply absorbs its opinions, and tends to fall 
without question into the prevailing habit; and 
as feeble intelligence is not inconsistent with 
strong propensities to action, a borrowed opinion 
may be maintained with the same pertinacity 
and force, and with the same sense of obligation, 
as an opinion deliberately adopted for reasons 
which convince. We may well believe, therefore, 
that in many minds the feeling of moral obligation 
contains elements which have this external origin. 
There is probably no one, indeed, whose moral 
habits are all independently formed. 

But to assume that the whole force of this 
feeling of moral obligation is the force of a habit 
thus imposed from without were to strain the 
facts. The force of habit, we know, is for good 
or for evil very great. But a habit which is not 
grounded in the form of our nature and the general 
conditions of life, or which tends to no good 
which the individual originally and spontaneously 
desires, could scarcely win that universal ascend- 
ancy which the habit of deferring to moral good, 
if not of practising it, tends to acquire. Even a 
senseless custom may turn out to be a custom 
once reasonable, 1 for which the reason has dis- 

1 Happily for the Hindus, the cow which supplies them 
with their only animal food — milk and butter — and the ox, 
which helps to till their ground, were declared sacred at an 
early period. Had it not been so, this useful animal might 
have been exterminated in times of famine. What is now 

16 



242 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

appeared. Men, after all, are not mere automatons 
gesturing by mechanic necessity, or mere fools 
with a trick of imitation. Conventional morality, 
it is true, is local and changeable. One man may 
think it a sin to marry his deceased wife's sister; 
another, to listen to a play, or to drink alcoholic 
liquors or smoke tobacco. But the moral obliga- 
tion which is in conformity with the social need, 
and which is felt, with various admixture, in all 
the communities of men who have made any con- 
siderable advance in the social art, cannot depend 
upon accident or convention, but must be referred 
to universal grounds. It must correspond, in other 
words, to some essential demand of our nature. 
And the moral demand is in fact based, as we 
have seen, upon a permanent and universal human 
interest. No act is in its moral effect simply pri- 
vate or transient. In the contentions of taste or 
of mere policy the decision affects, or is felt to 
affect, restricted or temporary interests. A matter 
of morals, on the other hand, affects, and is more 
or less distinctly felt to affect, the interests of all. 
Fraud or theft or homicide is never a merely per- 
sonal affair which it were impertinent to meddle 
with, but threatens the common weal and shocks 
the sympathetic consciousness which holds the 
community together. One man's business is here 

a superstition had its origin, like some other superstitions 
in a wise foresight. — Monier Williams: Hinduism, p. 156, 
note (1878). 



Morality and Happiness 243 

every man's business. However private the in- 
jury, morally the offence is public; and in con- 
demning it the moral censor feels that he voices 
the judgment of all, not excluding the offender 
when he comes to himself. Hence we are all, on 
occasion, custodians of the moral law. Conscious, 
vaguely or distinctly, of the common character 
of all moral questions, we feel that the law must 
be obeyed and sustained by all; and, impressed 
by the gravity of the moral issue, we feel the 
moral obligation with a force which no other 
form of obligation can acquire. Other motives 
may at times prove stronger than the moral 
motive. Fear or desire may overmaster every 
other impulse. But no other obligation has claims 
so permanent or so general as the moral obligation. 
It should be noted, however, that the feeling 
of moral obligation is not in all respects unique. 
All corporate activity generates in the members 
of the corporate body a feeling of obligation to 
further the common ends. Any practical rules, 
in fact, tend as the interests which they affect be- 
come general to assume in the minds of the parties 
interested an obligatory form. The art critic, 
censuring an offender against the canons of taste ; 
the lawyer or physician, reproaching an associate 
for unprofessional conduct; polite society, even, 
commenting on some social indiscretion, or 
possibly on some mere disregard of the correct 
form in dress ; all assume something of the tone of 



244 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

the moral censor condemning the violation of a 
moral obligation. The indiscretion may have 
a moral bearing strengthening the force of the 
reproach, but the authoritative tone may be as- 
sumed when no moral censure is intended. And 
the reason is obvious. The censor speaks as the 
representative of a class upon a matter in which 
every member of the class has an interest. It is 
corporate feeling, more or less consciously present, 
which suggests the censor's impersonal and 
authoritative tone, and it is corporate feeling 
which creates in the offender the sense of obligation 
to which the censure is directed. 

But any class or corporate interest, when com- 
pared with the moral interest, is seen to be specific 
and narrow. The corporate body in morals is 
humanity itself, and though the corporate feeling 
to which the moral appeal is made has not yet the 
breadth which the solidarity of human interests 
should assure it, it tends with the progress of the 
race to broaden to this measure. The pressure of 
the obligation which weighs upon the moral con- 
sciousness thus tends to correspond to the magni- 
tude of the moral issue. The correspondence is not 
yet by any means complete. But it is fairly well 
recognised that no other obligation can compare 
in breadth or significance with the moral obligation. 
The difference in this respect is in fact felt to be 
so great that it is commonly taken to be a differ- 
ence in kind. 



Morality and Happiness 245 

The difference is not so great, however, as to pre- 
clude the conclusion that the moral consciousness 
is developed by natural growth, under the con- 
ditions of social life, from the fundamental charac- 
teristics of our nature. In the course of the 
development of social life the appearance of a sense 
of obligation commensurate with the interests seen 
to be involved was inevitable, and this sense of 
obligation, reinforced and made definite by ex- 
perience and discipline, has led men to discriminate 
between good and evil, in the more common re- 
lations of life, with the assurance and promptness 
of an instinctive judgment. This instinctive 
judgment is the judgment of conscience. 1 And 
conscience has now become, in different stages 
of development, almost a part of the furniture of 
the mind. Wanting a conscience, one seems to 
want a human attribute. 

And we have in conscience as judgment, as will 
be seen from its genesis, a guide of great value 
in the emergencies of practice. It is important, 
too, to note at this point that we have in con- 
science as feeling a more or less active factor 

1 By coalescence, a vast group of social habits of judging 
others, and of feeling myself judged by them, can get woven 
into a complex product such as is now my conscience. Con- 
science is a well-knit system of socially acquired habits of 
estimating acts — a system so constituted as to be easily 
aroused into conscious presence by the coming of the idea of 
any hesitantly conceived act. — Josiah Royce: Anomalies of 
Self -consciousness; Psych. Review, Sept., 1895. 



246 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

in the happiness or unhappiness of the moral 
agent. In discussing the grounds of moral choice 
there must be added, therefore, as we have said, 
to the undefined and uninterpreted feeling of moral 
distemper or moral health, the more specialised 
feelings which attend the workings of conscience, 
which may be called by comparison the articulate 
moral sense. 

And the influence of conscience upon the 
affective life is, in general, undoubtedly great. 
Tranquillity of conscience, where there is a keen 
sense of right, is an index of moral health, com- 
parable with the physical content which goes 
with sound digestion and settled nerves. The 
sting of an outraged conscience, on the other 
hand, may drive a man, brooding on his deeds, 
to madness. To conscience, therefore, the moral- 
ist as mentor continually appeals. And in that 
more genial treatment of morals which in literature 
must subserve the purposes of art the conscious 
revolt of the moral nature is still the supreme 
penalty of crime. Remorse is Melpomene's ever- 
recurring theme. But remorse is keen only in 
finely developed natures. In those grosser dis- 
positions whose moral habit is mainly external and 
rests in a feeble original sense of right the wounds 
of conscience quickly heal. As punishment they 
are in such cases inadequate. And in the mass of 
mankind we may say, perhaps, that conscience, as 
one of the later phases in the development of the 



Morality and Happiness 247 

conscious life, is too imperfectly organised to be 
depended on as the sole sanction of the moral 
demand. It reinforces what we may call the 
organic penalty, which lies in the degradation of 
the general affective tone, but it is perhaps only 
in the exceptional case that it is of itself an 
adequate penalty. 

So far, then, as conscience alone is concerned 
we do not find that it can offset by its sting all 
immoral satisfaction, or by its approval com- 
pensate for all moral sacrifice. In the main, 
perhaps, it inflicts the keenest pain on those who, 
with occasional lapses, most heed its monitions. 1 
The graver evil back of moral as of physical pain 
lies in the morbid or destructive changes of which 
pain is the index, and which work a permanent 
disability in the system. The knife will cut and 
fire will burn the flesh which anaesthetics have 
made dead to pain; and those generous motions 
of the spirit which deepen and sweeten our lives 
are cramped by selfishness and unkindness whether 
conscience be tender or callous. Nevertheless 
the specific feelings which attend our conscious 
relations to the moral law powerfully supplement 
that organic reaction to evil and to good which is 
the unconscious sanction of the law. Conscience, 

1 On the whole, it is more than doubtful whether conscience, 
considered apart from the course of action it prescribes, is not 
the cause of more pain than pleasure. Its reproaches are 
more felt than its approval. — W.E. H. Lecky: Hist, of Eur op. 
Morals, p. 64. (Appleton, N. Y., 1884.) 



248 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

in other words, by intensifying the individual's 
interest in the social or general good, in which the 
moral good lies, tends to identify it more closely 
with the general interest, and to make the possi- 
bility of an absolute moral sacrifice somewhat 
more remote. 



CHAPTER XXVI 

discussion continued: value of moral prin- 
ciples SEEN ONLY IN LIFE AS A WHOLE 

SOME of the difficulties which beset us in any 
attempt to determine whether we have in the 
conscious and unconscious effects of conduct on 
feeling sin's full requital or virtue's sufficient reward 
arise from the use of misleading terms or a false 
method of appraisal. One of these difficulties, 
already noted, is the tendency to restrict the 
word "pleasure" to merely sensuous or egoistic 
relations. This restriction is based on popular 
usage, but it has given rise to much misunderstand- 
ing in ethical discussion. The appeal to what we 
call the "higher" self, with its finer and more 
enduring satisfactions, is made with a certain 
awkwardness when couched in terms which are 
commonly applied to the grosser and more tran- 
sitory satisfactions of the " lower ' ' self. But there 
ought to be no difficulty on this account in in- 
telligent inquiry. Yet even philosophers are mis- 
led. Men writing in a grave and for the most 
part dispassionate spirit, having degraded the 
term pleasure to the level of its ordinary accept- 
ance, gird at it with facile scorn. But sometime, 

249 



250 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

perhaps, patient iteration will expose the futility 
of this procedure. We shall not dwell on the 
point now. 

There is, however, a difficulty which does not 
spring from the use of a word, and which demands 
more careful consideration. It turns on the 
method of estimating values. We find writers 
of every school ignoring the unity and continuity 
of the conscious life. They assume, in the evalua- 
tion of conduct, that each act may be isolated, and 
that its affective worth must be determined by the 
sole consideration of the act, thus torn from its 
setting, with its specific accompaniment of feeling. 
Take any instance at hand. Prompted by some 
inconvenient scruple, a man revolts at the lie or 
indirection which the interests of his employer 
are supposed to require, forfeits his position, 
lingers in poverty, and dies in neglect. Or a 
passing stranger, entering a burning house to 
rescue a child, saves its life, but loses his own. 
By what hedonic calculus can we measure the 
worth of any such sacrificial act? How with 
any candour can we talk of compensation? 
Detached from the personality of which the 
act is the expression, it would seem that the 
act is, on the basis of aflectional values, simply 
indefensible. 

But the method of evaluation is false. The 
conscious life is not a mere sum of separable 
states. It is a vital whole. Each several act is 



Morality and Happiness 251 

determined by the general nature of the ego as 
the gait of a man is determined by the structure 
of his frame. And this unity, as we have seen, 
is a continuing unity. The vice or the heroism of 
to-day dates back to the wilful or serviceable 
habit of the child, and feeling, as indissolubly 
associated with function, follows the same vital 
law. The ego is, in short, a development, and 
while the whole is effectively present in every 
act, each act becomes in itself a cause which in 
its degree modifies the constitution of the whole. 
Every act in effecting its object reacts on the 
subject. Each setting of the will thus becomes 
a factor in the constitution of the ego, and tends, 
through the relation of function to feeling, to 
raise or depress, refine or imbrute, the general 
emotional tone. And in this effect it increases or 
diminishes the value of life. 

There are gradations, it is true, in the subjec- 
tive import of the act. It is a volitional act 
by which a man, for instance, chooses the cloth 
for his coat, or makes up an order from a bill of 
fare, or takes the beach rather than the mountains 
for his walk. But the effect on the general tone 
of the life is in such case infinitesimal. Only 
trivial issues are involved in the choice. But it is 
of the nature of the moral choice that its effect is 
never trivial or merely personal. The moral 
demand, as we have seen, is the demand of man's 
social nature, and immorality is an attack on the 



252 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

scheme by which society coheres and under 
which the individual develops. Few of us, per- 
haps, have a definite conception of this truth, 
but fewer still can shake off the conviction that 
momentous issues are involved in each moral 
decision. Each springs from and reacts upon 
the social or moral nature of the man. Whether 
he perceives the import of his decision or not, 
whether he wills to subdue himself to the moral 
demand or to defy it, the origin and effect of his 
decision are as deep as is the social impulse of 
which morality is the rational law. 

Morality thus stands in vital relation to the 
development and general tone of the psychic life. 
Inasmuch as the whole self as built up in the past 
is effectively present in each act of moral choice, 
no estimate of the subjective value of the act can 
be just which dissociates the act from the self 
in its wholeness, and from the spirit and tone which 
have marked the whole life of the self. The 
particular act is but the expression of a principle 
which characterises the permanent and essential 
nature of the man, and the justification of the 
sacrificial act must be sought, not in certain 
pulsations of feeling directly evoked by the act, 
but in the whole effect of the principle on the life 
which it has controlled. 

If it shall happen, then, that the will has acquired 
a force of moral habit which urges the self to some 
act of self-effacement, it seems not impossible that 



Morality and Happiness 253 

the act may be justified even from the hedonic 
point of view. The courage of the physician or the 
nurse who braves contagion and dies, or of the 
shipmaster who in saving his charge goes down 
with his ship, is a permanent attribute of the 
will; and as the act flows from the attribute, it is 
the value of the attribute rather than the value 
of the act that should be gauged in the affectional 
estimate. We might say, perhaps, that even in the 
isolated act the subject is in part at least indemni- 
fied by the moment's exaltation. And possibly, in 
natures of the finest fibre, the ecstasy of self- 
surrender in a cause which the self holds dear 
may outweigh in the affectional scale all im- 
munities and satisfactions that might be pur- 
chased by defection from the cause. 1 But the 
evaluation which takes account of present feeling 
only is incomplete. The sacrificial act is the 
product of a habit which has had a lifetime for 
its growth, and the habit, which now yields its 
costliest fruit, has already enhanced the con- 
scious worth of the life whose attitude it has ruled. 
The compensation for sacrifice thus begins to run 
before the consummating act. It lies in the 

1 For he [the good man] would prefer being pleased for 
a short time exceedingly, than for a long time, slightly; and 
to live one year honourably than many years in the ordinary 
manner; and to perform one honourable and great act, rather 
than many small ones. Those who die for their country 
this perhaps actually befalls. — Aristotle: Bookix., chap. viii. 
(Browne's tr.) 



254 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

permanent tone of feeling characteristic of the 
attitude which makes the sacrifice possible. 

And there is no method of proving the affec- 
tional worth of one's governing principle except by 
a free and fearless response to its demands. 
What it prompts one to do one must do with the 
whole heart. To doubt and to waver and to 
yield a hesitant adherence is in a measure to 
surrender the principle, and through the effect 
of distraction on the feeling robs even final com- 
pliance of much of its subjective value. Take 
the quality of personal affection. The subjec- 
tive value of a strong affection is indisputable, 
but no real affection can be said to exist where 
there is no disposition to incur in its expression a 
personal risk. A strong affection indeed will 
court the risk, and for the sake of its object will 
tranquilly face danger or death. The affection 
proves its own worth to the subject, and the 
exaltation of the feeling, or its subjective worth, 
is in proportion to the strength of the affection. 

Like considerations apply to every principle of 
the conscious life. The force of the vital impulse 
is measured, in fact, by the odds it will face, and a 
careful prudence which reckons to evade every 
risk benumbs each impulse and forestalls its 
satisfaction. A principle or an idea, to prove 
its full worth for the feeling, must be followed 
in scorn of consequence to the person. The self 
must merge in the idea ; and where the idea, as in 



Morality and Happiness 255 

any question of morals, has such breadth that it 
touches all human good the personal consideration 
is obviously a fatal impertinence. It expels the 
idea and checks the effort and enthusiasm which 
the idea might inspire. The effect of its intrusion 
is thus to paralyse the finer part of our conscious 
activity and to reduce the self and its satisfactions 
to the personal limit. To bargain for creature 
comforts, to shrink from suffering, to count the 
cost, in the service of that fraternity which prom- 
ises the fruition of all human hopes, is to renounce 
the service, though it excels all service in its power 
to satisfy the soul. Whither the idea leads the 
self must follow, and if it leads to personal defeat 
or physical death the sacrifice is not therefore 
absolute. These things but attest its strength 
and its power to satisfy. 

Morality is, in fine, not an act, but a habit of 
action, and the subjective worth of the habit must 
be rated by its whole effect in the life. Perfect 
virtue we shall hardly find. Some lapse we must 
allow for, with its reaction in the will and in the 
quality of the feeling. But if the defection is 
not justified by the sophisms of self-esteem, 
if error is in candour taken for what it is and the 
will holds in its main direction true, action and 
feeling may maintain their high general level. 
For the feeling must rate with the main course 
of the action. Honesty may miss some of the 
prizes which dishonesty covets and wins. Com- 



256 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

pliance may, in its own way, profit more than 
sincerity and a nice sense of honour. The de- 
votion of affection or of duty may lead to 
unnoted suffering, or to the sleep which is uncon- 
scious of suffering as of joy. But the will loyal 
to the human interest cannot miss the exalted 
feeling which its loyalty inspires. 1 And if the 
moral purpose leads to some act of sacrifice, the 
act virtually began when the purpose was em- 
braced, and at that instant its compensations 
began. For the moral purpose tends, from the 
moment it becomes active in the will, to raise the 
plane of action and feeling, and as it deepens and 
strengthens it clears up the paradox, at which 
prudence stumbles, that the greater sacrifice is the 
easier, that the life of most worth to the subject 
is the life most freely flung away. 

* Suppose, however thickly evils crowd upon you, that 
your unconquerable subjectivity proves to be their match, 
and that you find a more wonderful joy than any passive 
pleasure can bring in trusting ever in the larger whole. 
Have you not now made life worth living on these terms? 
— Prof. W. James: Essays in Popular Philosophy, p. 60. 



CHAPTER XXVII 

discussion concluded: the more complete 

the virtue the more completely is virtue 

its own reward 



M 



AY we conclude then, without qualification, 
that the moral choice has on affectional 
grounds the same justification in the individual 
life as in the general life? Can we be assured, 
in other words, that virtue, whatever the sacrifice 
it demands, brings its own recompense? 

The common-sense of mankind, not always a 
safe guide perhaps, shrinks from such a conclusion. 
A cool head, applying the hedonic test, and com- 
paring the losses of an uncompromising virtue 
with the gains of the temporising spirit which 
listens to the suggestions of policy, might think 
it reasonable, on occasion, to make certain con- 
cessions. And, indeed, a man with little inclina- 
tion to compromise, a man of courage and resolve, 
might find it hard to prove that he runs no 
risk, if loyal to his ideals, of unrequited self-sacrifice 
or absolute loss. The fragmentary nature of 
human experience and the relative contingency 
of human events in general as effects of an in- 
finity of causes seem to infect every aspect of life 
17 257 



258 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

with uncertainty. Apparently any rule of action 
may at some time fail us. Intelligence may be 
baffled, courage may be defeated, affection may be 
spent on ingratitude; and, in view of the mistakes, 
miscarriages, and misfortunes which bulk so 
largely in the individual life, it would seem that 
no principle is so secure that we may embrace it 
with an assurance that is absolute. 

It may be urged, on the other hand, that this 
uncertainty affects only the external form of our 
experience. The issue of our acts, the course of 
events, our tenure of life and of the perishable 
goods of life, are indeed incalculable. 

" Chances mock 
And changes fill the cup of alteration 
With divers liquors." 

But the reaction of conduct upon consciousness 
takes a definite and more or less calculable course. 
Human nature is a finite system. It develops 
in function and feeling and is degraded or refined 
in accordance with laws of its own. In choosing 
a mode of life, therefore, which is founded deeply 
and securely in the laws of our nature the risks 
attending the choice must be such as affect the 
outer rather than the inner experience, the acci- 
dental form rather than the subjective value of 
life. And in the appraisal of ultimate values, 
according to the Stoic's contention, the attitude 
of the spirit, as the onfy thing within our power, 



Morality and Happiness 259 

is the only thing which counts. The moral atti- 
tude, at any rate, is the attitude of a spirit sane 
and whole, that is, the attitude most consonant 
with the nature of man ; and, counting the goods of 
life at their real value, what risk worth considering 
can be run in the conservation of spiritual sanity 
and health? The rule of life, while life runs on, 
would seem to be plain. The profoundest interest 
of the human spirit is in the right, and if the 
choice should lie between merely external loss 
and the degradation of the affectional tone which 
follows betrayal of the right, it were better, in 
view of that which gives life its chief value, to 
surrender the outer good. So the Stoic. 

But death, we may be reminded, concludes 
both the external and the internal life, and if 
death is the sacrifice, the whole meed of virtue 
must be found in the forerunning life. That such 
a sacrifice has indeed a forerunning compensation 
we have seen good reason to believe. But is the 
compensation in such case adequate? 

It would seem that the answer cannot be in all 
cases the same. If there be a creature human 
in form but so like an animal that it lives only 
for animal gratification, loss of life for such a 
creature would simply be uncompensated loss. 
Doubtless there is no such creature, human nature 
being essentially social, and therefore to a certain 
extent moral; but the nearer a human being ap- 
proaches to the brutish type the less adequate is 



260 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

the forerunning compensation for the sacrifice of 
life, or indeed for any moral sacrifice. To persons 
very near this type the moral appeal is therefore 
vain. It must be supplemented by fear. But the 
body of civilised society is made up of men and 
women with a fairly developed social nature, which 
renders them susceptible to moral pain and moral 
satisfaction, and therefore amenable to moral dis- 
cipline and treatment. Manifestly it is to such 
persons alone that the question of compensation 
for moral sacrifice is applicable, and it applies with 
increasing force as the social or moral nature is 
more highly developed. But we must allow, per- 
haps, measuring the good of life by the satisfaction 
it yields, that a moral sacrifice which involves 
the surrender of life cannot, for certain gross and 
callous natures, be offset entirely by the gains 
brought by the principle for which the sacrifice 
is made. In other words, it would seem that 
there must be cases in which the sacrifice of life 
involves a greater loss of satisfaction or pleasure 
than the sacrifice of principle. 

In cases like these we cannot deny that the 
moral choice involves a certain risk. And possibly 
most men feel the hazards of virtue. But, as 
we have said, there is no principle of life or of 
action that is not subject to the contingency of 
human affairs. Yet the principle is not neces- 
sarily impeached because of the risks attendant 
on its choice. One plays the game of life accord- 



Morality and Happiness 261 

ing to its rules, and whatever the theory which a 
man embraces he cannot hope to reap the bene- 
fits of his theory if he is unwilling to incur its 
risks. In other words, a man cannot get much 
out of life unless he is capable of risking his life, 
and if a man elects to be governed by the moral 
law he loses the supreme benefit of the law unless 
he is willing to face death as the possible conse- 
quence of his choice. A half-hearted or vacillating 
morality can hardly be called morality or yield 
much moral satisfaction, for the moral law is in its 
claim as social law paramount, and to shrink 
from the risks which its observance incurs is 
practically to abandon the law as a principle of 
conduct. It is as if a man assuming to be brave 
should be found full of courage save when his 
safety is threatened. He has neither the quality 
nor the meed of courage. 

It should be noted, moreover, that there is a 
compensatory reaction in the feelings even for 
such risk as virtue may be deemed to hazard. 
The pleasure we take in any pursuit varies, other 
things equal, with the interest we feel in the result, 
and our interest in any projected end is never 
quite complete without some spice of fear that the 
project may miscarry. Certainty dulls the edge 
of desire, and attainment itself, if assured from 
the first, fails to satisfy. Whether we are in sport 
or in earnest, some perilous condition, some risk 
of failure, is necessary to evoke and sustain such 



262 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

interest as incites the will to that supreme effort 
on which supreme satisfaction depends. May 
we not say, then, that if man in his great moral 
struggle ran no hazard, the moral purpose itself 
would be weakened, and the moral life, losing 
the sense of possible loss, would lose also that 
supreme interest in the right and that sense of 
exaltation which attend the power to make 
sacrifice for the right? The principle is general. 
The uncertain tenure of any good appears to be 
essential to an appreciative consciousness of the 
good. A friend were less a friend were there no 
dread of parting; art, knowledge, action were less 
satisfying were the time to create, to learn, and to 
do, not so short; and life itself were less vital and 
sweet could we escape from the shadow of the 
wings of death. Fear, failure, and death give 
form and relief to hope, achievement, and life; 
and though Virtue, threading the mazes of ex- 
perience, may risk life and much that is precious 
in life, the possibility of loss but endears the face 
of Virtue to her followers. Goodness is in itself 
the more blest for the good which it may lose. 

Our conclusion, then, is that the moral life is so 
far justified by its effect in the feeling of the 
moral agent that we cannot say, speaking of the 
ordinary social unit, that the virtuous choice is 
ever, from the hedonic point of view, a mistaken 
choice. For men really sharing the social life 
the presumptions are all in its favour. More 



Morality and Happiness 263 

than this it were perhaps rash to affirm. Men 
stand on so many different moral planes, the 
facts of any moral situation are so complex, and 
feeling is so elusive and so difficult to compare 
and appraise, that proof positive in any particular 
case can hardly be supplied. 1 But thus much 
seems certain: while we may admit that below 
a certain level of moral development the moral 
motive as we understand it is inadequate, never- 
theless the strengthening and refining of the 
moral habit intensifies the pains of immorality 
on the one hand and increases the satisfactions 
of moral conduct on the other; that is to say, the 
moral progress of the individual makes it pro- 
gressively more certain and more apparent that 
virtue is, in the feeling of the subject, its own re- 
ward. And we may add, where the virtue is 
complete there doubtless its compensation is 
without hazard or qualification complete. 

1 lias 6 irepl rwv irpaKrCiv X670S riirtf koX ovk dKpi/3cDs 6(pei\ei. 
\£ye<rdai. Aristotle: Eth. Nic, II., ii., 3. 

Everything said on moral subjects ought to be said 
in outline, and not with exactness. (Browne's tr.) 



SECTION VII 
Scope of Morality 
CHAPTER XXVIII 

MORAL DISCIPLINE PRESUPPOSES OTHER DISCI- 
PLINES. ALL MERGED IN RELIGION 

THE moral law, as we have seen, is based on 
the promptings of the social impulse and the 
requirements of the associative life. It is the 
law of the socialised will. And its general adop- 
tion is an essential condition of that free union 
of independent minds which constitutes a true 
society, or a society in which human nature 
may find the incentive, the means, and the oppor- 
tunity for its completest expression. 

It is important to note, however, that while 
the matter of ethics or morals is conduct in 
general, the science of ethics is not, strictly speak- 
ing, a general science of life. We have seen how 
it is parted off from politics and jurisprudence, 
sciences with which it is closely conjoined. It 
is much more sharply distinguished from the 
natural sciences, from industrial and the finer arts, 
and from a host of special disciplines and pursuits 

264 



Scope of Morality 265 

for which it offers no specific guidance. For 
such guidance we must turn to the arts and pur- 
suits themselves. Ethics is not to be conceived, 
however, as applying to any isolated sphere of con- 
duct, or as standing entirely aloof from any form 
of volitional action whatever. The arts and 
pursuits of life, being themselves a social product, 
all have social and moral significance; and they 
cannot be pursued to their perfect results except in 
that "sad sincerity," or fidelity to the aspirations 
of humanity, which is, one may say, the substance 
of the moral habit. But though morality has re- 
spect to all action and all volition, it has but one 
end directly in view: its aim is to give such 
form and direction to the will as shall prove 
most effective in promoting the social union of our 
kind. This is the office which makes its discipline 
specific. It deals with life as a whole, and in a 
sense indeed with life in all its parts, but its dis- 
tinctive function is to socialise all functions. And 
it owes its dignity and authority to the vastness 
of the interests which depend upon the discharge 
of its office. 

But the value of the social union which it is the 
purpose of morality to establish depends on the 
equipment and effectiveness of the social units. 
If we could conceive of men as associated , without 
art or science or letters, in perfect amity and help- 
fulness, such a union might represent a certain 
social ideal. There are inoffensive animals who 



266 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

present some approach to such an ideal. But the 
commanding importance of the social union for 
which we are prepared by moral discipline rests 
upon the fact that it is an association, not of 
animals or of sweet-natured imbeciles, but of men 
socially conjoined in the exercise and development 
of every capacity of man. Moral discipline should 
therefore anticipate, as it must be supplemented 
by, the several special disciplines. The various 
interests of the conscious subject, sensuous, 
cognitive, artistic, speculative, practical, all de- 
mand recognition. Their demand rests, in fact, 
in the same organic need as the moral demand 
itself, namely, the need of the organism to dis- 
charge its functions; and the moral demand 
is supreme only in the sense that its fulfilment 
in the establishment of the associative life is the 
supreme condition of the complete development 
of our functional capacity. 

On the other hand, the increasing complexity 
of the associative life which follows development 
of capacity and increase of knowledge brings new 
matter to which we may address ourselves in the 
spirit of the moral aim. As the pursuits of life 
multiply, the points of sympathetic contact 
multiply. Though the organisation of society 
tends in certain directions to the specialisation 
of function, it finds the individual, as it advances, 
a constituent and sympathising element in a 
broader general life. A man's very craft or voca- 



Scope of Morality 267 

tion draws him out of himself, linking his activities 
to those of his fellows, and he acquires through 
membership in the general body social, civil, po- 
litical, and intellectual interests which stimulate 
his own development. The richer the general life, 
or the greater its progress in literature, science, 
art, philosophy, and methods of social organisa- 
tion, the richer the individual life. Each advances 
with the other, and the sympathy which expressed 
itself at first in a few rude affections and tribal 
instincts binds at length the individual to the 
race, and expands into that most composite and 
most powerful of feelings, the passion for humanity, 
which is the stimulus of thought, the inspiration 
of art, and the motive of that self-renunciation 
which is the completest self-expression. 

Moral progress thus depends on general pro- 
gress. Neither the moral law nor the moral 
consciousness can be developed by itself. Each ex- 
pands by application to an expanding life. The 
moral life has, it is true, an end of its own, namely, 
to socialise the will, or to re-cast the general form 
of our life in the social interest. But it pre- 
supposes a body of instincts, habits, and occupa- 
tions, upon which the social form may be imposed, 
and it cannot develop save through the develop- 
ment of the material upon which it works. It is, 
in a word, not a closed sphere, or a distinct and 
separate life; it is the infusion of the social spirit 
into every impulsion of life. 



268 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

And as the moral life cannot be isolated from 
the general life of the self, neither can the self be 
severed from the social body of which it is an 
element. The self, being a social product, is 
true to its nature only when it shapes its activities 
in conformity with general or social ends. It 
can never be conceived as in itself complete. As 
the moral feeling which torments itself with 
continued self -inspection, self-disparagement, and 
self-correction becomes egoistic and in a real 
sense immoral, so self -culture or self-development, 
if conceived in too strict a sense, tends to the 
degeneration of the self. The intellect demands 
the stimulating service of generic and impersonal 
aims. The ego must be conceived in its social es- 
sence, in its need of human sympathy and support, 
and in its dependence for supreme inspiration 
upon ideals which transcend the self. Self-respect 
may remind us, indeed, that the self remains 
throughout a constitutive element of the social 
union, and that there can be no social progress 
apart from the progress of the social elements or 
units. But the processes of life run forth of the 
self: the stream of all healthful activity tends 
outwards. The self is most its own when lost in 
its object, and it is most completely occupied 
and therefore most completely satisfied when de- 
voted to the service of universal ends, ends in 
which the self is absorbed and forgotten. 

But the idea of the self is yet incomplete if 



Scope of Morality 269 

the self is conceived merely as an element in the 
general life of human kind. The broad current of 
humanity's life is itself but a phase of that eternal 
process which, in accordance with the analogies 
of human thought, we may call the Universal 
Life. And the self, reading its own nature in the 
light of its own experience, and finding in the 
service of humanity the indispensable condition 
of its own supreme activity and satisfaction, recog- 
nises in this condition an aspect of the Universal 
Will or Law upon which the self and humanity 
and all things depend. In this recognition the 
moral self becomes religious. The moral ideal, 
strictly conceived, is but an aspect of a more 
general ideal, in which the self is conceived in the 
fulness of its functional life. But the idea of the 
self is further expanded and merges in the idea of 
Man, which, conceived in the perfection of all 
its qualities as a goal or term within the processes 
of the Universal Life, is the religious ideal; and 
the progress of man as he advances in social 
amity and unity towards the realisation of this 
ideal is the divine event in which, for us, the 
infinite activity takes intelligible direction and 
character. It is true that the Infinite, as such, 
transcends all qualification, all limit. But to 
apprehend in any sense the Infinite we must in 
some manner define or seize upon some intelli- 
gible aspect of the Infinite. Here it is the supreme 
human interest which defines. For us all else is 



270 Function, Feeling, and Conduct 

irrelevant. The Infinite is in the religious con- 
sciousness identified with that aspect of universal 
power which tends in all and through all to the 
manifestation or accomplishment of our human 
ideals. To religious feeling all that in nature 
or in human nature is fine or excellent appeals 
as the gift of the Infinite Giver, in whom it 
thus sees the source of all beauty, all wisdom, 
all goodness. But the religious consciousness, 
impressed by the gravity of its perennial conflict 
with moral evil, is preoccupied mainly with moral 
ideals, and finds by preference a symbol for all 
excellence in the Good. Hence the Infinite is to 
the religious sense Infinite Goodness. In this 
habit of the religious mind we see that the moral 
spirit is still dominant in religious feeling. And 
possibly it will remain so, even when religion, as 
the quest of the ideal, expands to the full meas- 
ure of its office and adopts into its cult the pursuit 
of all excellence; for it is only through the associa- 
tion of human effort in fraternal union, which is 
the moral aim, that humanity can press all its 
energies to ideal achievement and measurably 
fulfil its aspirations. 



INDEX 



Albee, Ernest, 98 

American Journal of Physiology, 45 

Aristotle, 56, 63, 148, 203, 253, 263 

B 

Bacon, 151 

Bain, A., 44, 96, 100 

Baldwin, J. Mark, 132, 146 

Belot, Gustav, 121 

Bentham, J., 55, 186 

Berkeley, 15 

Binet et Henri, 92 

Bosanquet, B., 34, 85, 87, 102, 119, 123 

Bradley, F. H., 6, 47, 83, 164, 207 

Brown, John, 73 

Brown, Thomas, 81 

Buckle, H. T., 138 



Calderwood, H., 76 

Causation, 5, 188 ff. 

Clarke, Samuel, 76 

Clifford, W. K., 82 

Comte, Auguste, 138, 156 

Conscious choice, 36 

Conscious ends, 23 ff. 

Consciousness and the competitive struggle, 117 

Continuity of the conscious life, 69 

Courage, 156 

Cudworth, Ralph, 76 

271 



272 Index 

D 

Darwin, Charles, 23, 134, 144, 155 
Descartes, 10, 11 
Duty, 151 

E 

Edwards, Jonathan, 190, 201, 202 
Everett, W. G., 90 



Feeling and choice, 40, 41 

Feeling, how revived, 89 

Feeling, not an object of volition, 93 

Ferrier, David, 45, 78, 87 

Fichte, 72 

Flint, Austin, 67 

" Force " of ideas, 38 

Fouill^e, A., 13, 36, 61, 123, 194, 206 

Fowler and Wilson, 35 

Freedom and causation, 198 

Freedom and necessity, 189 ff. 

Freedom of the will, 199 ff. 

Function and feeling, 44 ff. 

Functions as related to ends, 60 ff. 



"Gap " between body and mind, 10 ff. 
Godwin, William, 190 
Goethe, 70 
Green, T. H., 76 
Grotius, Hugo, 76 

H 

Happiness and progress, 222 ff. 
Harmony, 72 ff. 
Hartmann, Eduard von, 222 
Hedonism, 86 



Index 273 

Hegel, 145 

Hobbes, 132, 202, 210 

Hobhouse, L. T., 120 

Hodgson, Shadworth H., 72, 203 

Hoffding, H., 3, 31, 38, 44, 77, 87, 90, 93, 100, 102 

Home, Henry, 81 

Houssay, Fr£d£ric, 118 

Hume, David, 79, 80, 190, 203 

Hutcheson, Francis, 80 

Huxley, T. H., 120 



Indolence, 156 
Infinite, the, iv., 3, 269 
Inhibition of ideas, 91, 92 
Integrity, 158 



James, William, 39, 59, 61, 97, 100, 104, 256 
Jurisprudence and ethics, 148 
Justice, 150 



Karnes, Lord, 81 
Kant, 7, 76, 171, 172 
Kiilpe, Oswald, 34, 48, 102 



K 



L 



Ladd, George T., 49 
Lecky, W. E. H., 81, 229, 247 
Lehmann, 89 
Locke, 201, 202 



Maine, H. J. S., x., 149, 161 
Marshall, H. R., 46 
Martin, H. N., 67 
18 



274 Index 

Martineau, James, 82, 201 
Matter, 2 

McKenzie, John S., 83, 87 
Mill, J. S., 106, 138, 196 
Moral philosophy, viii. 
Moral sense, 81 ff. 
Moral spirit, the, 162 ff. 
Morals and science, iv. ff. 
Munsterberg, H., 49, 61, 92, 106 

N 

Natural law of choice, 109 
Natural penalties, 186 
Nature, how far definable, 4, 5 

O 

Organic unity of nature, 6, 9 

P 

Paulhan, F., 120, 179 

Paulsen, Friedrich, 83 

Philosophy and morals, vi. 

Pioger, Julien, 123 

Plato, 5, 72, 134 

Pleasurable feeling, conditions of, 50 ff. 

"Pleasure" an abstraction, 86 ff. 

Pleasure and pain, 30 ff. 

Pleasures, quantity and quality of, 10 1 ff. 

Politics and ethics, 148 

Pollock, Frederick, 172 

Power, immanence of, 190 ff. 

Price, Richard, 76 

Principle of choice, 28, 108, 115 

Principles of social union, 140 

Proximate ends, 62 ff. 

Q 

Quantity and quality of pleasures, 10 1 ff. 



Index 275 

R 



Rational law of choice, no 
Reason as a moral faculty, 75 ff. 
Religion and ethics, 149, 269 
Responsibility, limitations of, 181 ff. 
Ribot, Th., 20, 22, 44, 49, 70 
Right, the, 147, 151 
Rights, basis of, 171 
Rousseau, J. J., 222 
Royce, Josiah, 74, 146, 173, 245 



Schopenhauer, A., 212 

Science and morals, iv. ff. 

Self-control, 158 

Self-defence, 169 

Self-realisation, 83, in 

Seneca, 158 

Seth, James, 76, 99 

Shaftesbury, 130 

Sidgwick, H., 206, 213 

Simcox, Edith, 83 

Social feeling, constitutional, 130 

Social union, principles of, 140 

Society and civilisation, 118 

Sorley, W. R., 85, 87 

Spencer, H., n, 12, 44, 87 

Spinoza, 11, 63, 140, 195 

Standard of values, 41 

Stephen, Leslie, 82, 119, 123, 229 

Sturt, Henry, 31 

Sully, James, 33, 47 

Sympathetic ideation, 126 ff. 



Taylor, A. E., 35 
Teleology, 7 
Titchener, E. B., 



276 Index 

u 

Ultimate ends, 62 ff. 
Unity of conscious life, 69 



Vitality of nature, 3 
Volitional choice, 38, 99 
Volition and causation, 197 

W 

Wallace, A. R., 25 

Ward, J., 14, 67 

Whewell, William, 76 

Williams, Monier, 242 

Will implies an end, 206, 207, 209 

Will to will, 212 

Wundt, W., 13, 48, 103, 105, 206, 216 



Ziehen, Th., 34, 61, 103 



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